Translations:Preserveren van digitale kunst: uitdagingen en oplossingen uit de praktijk/14/en

:Q: What other steps (besides defining the essential properties) are necessary to preserve the work?

A: The documentation of the work and its context is a precondition. The documentation will have a technical and an art-historical/contextual and an installation part. After having analysed the work, it will be possible to decide about the preservation strategies (migration, emulation, documentation). I am mentioning documentation as a preservation strategy, as documentation of the work sometimes replaces the original work (i.e. a video or photographs of a performance that replace the performance itself). For Shan Shui, documentation as a preservation strategy would hardly be appropriate. Migration or emulation would be the preservation strategy of choice. After the work has been emulated or migrated, one will have to make sure that the significant properties are met. In addition, a disk image of the drive in the computer and copies of operating systems and other software components will have to be made and safely stored in a digital repository. Last but not least, regular maintenance of the digitally stored components will be necessary (integrity checks, rendering capability).