Tools and Concepts for Safeguarding and Researching Born-Digital Culture - (Re-)Defining Object Boundaries and Citation of Complex Digital Objects

• Applicant: Dr. Klaus Rechert
• Subject Area: Theatre and Media Studies
• Term: from 2015 to 2017
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 274005063

Born-digital works of art and literature are some of society's most at-risk cultural materials, where obsolescence and loss of cultural history are an imminent risk. From interactive software-based art, or online networked literature, these works ("born-digital" because they were created in digital form, rather than having been converted from print or analog equivalents), are an important record of our cultural and aesthetic history as a digital society. Preserving and maintaining access to born-digital art and literature, designed for ephemeral experiences, challenges many principles of preservation. Referencing (citation), accessing or even simply presenting these works requires new methods and tools, as these objects typically have undefined conceptual and technical boundaries, and/or an unlimited number of relevant intermediate or volatile inner states. Therefore a static approach to preservation and presentation cannot meet the requirements for long-term availability, nor for presentation and research. Equally as important to this project, the concerns of the digital art and literature field can help to map an entire future approach to digital preservation that values rich contextual and cultural understanding for all complex born-digital materials, across disciplines - from eBooks, to historically important computers and more. This project uses the field of born-digital art and literature as a prescient challenge in order to contribute to Humanities research and scholarship more broadly. The project addresses specific challenges to the preservation of these objects, including: problems in defining the boundaries of objects that require more 'performance/usage-based' approaches; lack of technical means for citation of complex digital artifacts, in particular volatile (intermediate) states of interactive or evolving objects; lack of standardized language to support the assessment of preserved digital artifacts which have been technically generalized; and lack of peer review methods for gauging authenticity of artifacts, due to their limited means of accessibility. For this, the project will develop novel tools, processes and workflows to preserve complex borndigital works of digital art and networked literature, using an emulation-based approach and addressing wider issues in Humanities research (in particular, citation and defining object boundaries). lt works with four leading German/US archives of art and literature - Rhizome, DLA Marbach, Vilem Flusser Archive and Yale University Library - and builds on University of Freiburg's Emulation-as-a-Service developed as a result of the bwFLA project.

• DFG Programme: Research data and software (Scientific Library Services and Information Systems)
• International Connection: USA
• Partner Organisation: National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH)
• Cooperation Partner: Dragan Espenschied