Symposium on conserving software-based art: Washington

TECHNOLOGY EXPERIMENTS IN ART: Conserving Software-Based Artworks
As artists continue to push the boundaries of what is possible through digital technology, institutions that acquire software-based artworks take on a daunting task: long-term care of works rooted in short-term technology, and systematic care of works created in idiosyncratic ways.
This day-long symposium will bring together artists, conservators, programmers, curators, and technicians. Their presentations will examine the challenges of conserving software-based artworks from a variety of perspectives—by exploring works created from the 1960s to the present, and looking at the ways technology, experiments, and art co-exist. This event’s title, a possibly sacrilegious nod to the seminal late-60s project EXPERIMENTS IN ART AND TECHNOLOGY, recognizes that today’s technology-based artworks are not only part of a rich creative legacy, but also call for creative thinking by those tasked with their care for future generations.

LOCATION: National Portrait Gallery and Smithsonian American Art Museum 800 G St. NW Washington, DC 20001 Please enter via the doors at the intersection of 8th & G Sts. NW. (All other entrances will be locked until 11:30am).

This event is free. Register online here:

PROGRAM:
Alex Cooper: “Acquisition and Conservation of Generative Artworks, National Portrait Gallery”
Deena Engel & Mark Hellar: “Technical Narratives and Software-Based Artworks”
Matthew Kirschenbaum: “The Afterlives of AGRIPPA: Preserving a Disappearing Digital Text 
Lincoln Schatz & James Murray: “It will fail and become obsolete” (artist and studio partnerships in software-based art conservation)
Dianne Dietrich & Desiree Alexander: “The Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art, Cornell University”
Aaron Straup, Senior Engineer, Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum: “Planetary: collecting and preserving code as a living object