Documenting digital art: re-thinking histories and practices of documentation in the museum and beyond

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Documentation is at the core of museum practices, but over the years methods to create documentations have evolved very little. Written description, completed questionnaires, static photos and video recordings are still created in conventional ways, and yet artworks have changed radically. Given the increase of digital art in particular, whose nature is often very ephemeral and experience highly subjective, and to ensure future art historical research as well as the sustainability of the artworks themselves, there is an urgent need for an expanded practice of documentation. This project will focus on digital art, one of the most precarious yet also most innovative and popular art forms. The main aim is to develop innovative ways to understand and new ways to create documentation that will impact the conservation and curation of artworks which are otherwise likely to become obsolete. Considering documentation as the main solution to preserving these art forms, this project will outline the significance of an expanded understanding of documentation for conservators and curators, academics, artists and policy makers. It will do so by analysing how documentation can address the inherent challenges of capturing live events, visitor experiences and evolving artworks, and value the meaning and function of documentation, as the only remains of digital art. The project will test these ideas in an exhibition at the Venice Biennale, using documents of the first computer art show held there to show the role of the public in re-defining how we understand these art forms. Taking this as a point of departure, the project will also analyse the role of the public in the production and re-interpretation of artworks at LIMA, looking specifically at the values of a range of technologies for the creation of documentation. Reflecting on the values of documentation, including 'unauthorised documentation', and expanding on the idea of audience documentation, the project will explore the potentiality, as well as challenges, that an upsurge and a dispersion of documentation cause to the sector. In particular, it will generate a framework that will define terms and practices developed in consultation with stakeholders, indicating what the parameters for documenting digital art may be. In exploring contemporary methods of documentation, the project will also address shifts in photographic technologies that have been central to the practice of art history, showing how from the Google Art Project to Instagram, the camera is now a networked but also dispersed computational device, which continues to mediate our experience of art, particularly online, through social media. The project will focus on the documentation of digital art by its audiences in an age where photography is both ubiquitous and intimately linked to self-expression and cultural consumption. In collaboration with The Photographers' Gallery digital programme, the project will generate new knowledge concerning photography's dual role as both a medium for digital art practice and an instrument of documentation, looking also at the ethics of crowdsourced documentations and problems pertaining to data protection in this context. Finally, the project will analyse the way these expanded practices of documentation are impacting the value and experience of the documented event or artwork and look into how this in turn affects the traditional authority of the museum as creator of documentation used for future reference, historical relevance or cultural memory. In doing so, the project will explore how museums might identify and develop new ways of maintaining curatorial authority over representing cultural value whilst empowering users to produce new content and value. These findings are likely to inspire museums to revisit their documentation practices and reassess the value of documentation and the role of the visitor in the exhibition and conservation of digital art.