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

数字化的艺术和文学作品是社会上风险最大的文化材料，其中文化历史的过时和丢失是一个迫在眉睫的风险。从基于交互式软件的艺术，或在线网络文学，这些作品（“数字化”，因为它们是以数字形式创作的，而不是从印刷或模拟等价物转换而来），是我们作为数字社会的文化和美学历史的重要记录。保存和维护为短暂体验而设计的数字艺术和文学的访问权限，挑战了许多保存原则。引用（引用），访问或甚至简单地呈现这些作品需要新的方法和工具，因为这些对象通常具有未定义的概念和技术边界，和/或无限数量的相关中间或易变的内部状态。因此，静态的保存和展示方法无法满足长期可用性的要求，也无法满足展示和研究的要求。对这个项目同样重要的是，数字艺术和文学领域的关注可以帮助绘制一个完整的未来数字保存方法，该方法重视对所有复杂的跨学科数字材料（从电子书到历史上重要的计算机等）的丰富的上下文和文化理解。该项目利用数字艺术和文学领域作为一个有先见之明的挑战，以促进人文研究和学术更广泛。该项目解决了保存这些对象的具体挑战，包括：在定义需要更多“基于性能/使用”的方法的对象的边界方面的问题;缺乏引用复杂数字文物的技术手段，特别是易失性文物。交互或演化对象的（中间）状态;缺乏标准化的语言来支持对保存下来的数字文物进行评估，这些文物在技术上已经普遍化;以及缺乏同行评审方法来衡量人工制品的真实性，因为它们的可访问性有限。为此，该项目将开发新的工具，流程和工作流程，以保护数字艺术和网络文学的复杂的可移植数字作品，使用基于仿真的方法，并解决人文研究中更广泛的问题（特别是引用和定义对象边界）。它与四个领先的德国/美国艺术和文学档案馆- Rhizome，DLA马尔巴赫，Vilem Flusser档案馆和耶鲁大学图书馆-合作，并建立在弗赖堡大学的仿真即服务基础上，作为bwFLA项目的结果。

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.