Digitising Contemporary Art

Digitisation for improved access to contemporary art.

Digitising Contemporary Art (DCA) was a digitisation project 2011–2015 to increase the visibility of contemporary artworks (installations, video, sculptures and more) in Europeana. It was a CIP-ICT PSP programme with over 30 partners, coordinated by PACKED (now Meemoo). Through the project, a digital archive representing 12 European countries was made spanning both traditional arts and video.

How Did It Encourage the Development of Best Practice?

Within the context of this project, LI-MA was in charge of and participated in several case studies, workshops and work packages and digitised collections of MSU and other partners. As part of the Digitising Contemporary Art project, LIMA digitised the media art collection of the artist duo Stansfield/Hooykaas. Together with Madelon Hooykaas, the entire archive of the Scottish-Dutch duo was catalogued and digitised to ensure that this unique collection of works would be accessible for the future.

LI-MA also produced a report concerning best practices for the physical storage of data, in line with the project’s goal of ensuring the accessibility of all digital content. The report gives an overview of storage media types and systems available at the time of publication (2013) for building a robust storage infrastructure. For each storage type, an explanation was provided in terms of its properties, advantages, and risks with an eye towards its suitability for long-term preservation purposes. 

The best practices compiled by LI-MA (see below) can be used as a guideline by anyone responsible for a contemporary art collection or digital archive who is hoping to improve their preservation plan. It can also be accessed along with the rest of the results and conclusions from the DCA project as part of the final executive project report (see below). 

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