Artists, Conservators and Game Developers: A comparative study of software preservation in three domains

这个博士学位的中心研究问题是：艺术家如何记录，保存和维护他们的基于软件的艺术？这些过程与收藏机构和游戏行业的保存过程有何不同，为什么不同？我们可以从艺术家和游戏行业的过程和实践中学到什么，这些过程和实践可能会在制度背景下为这些作品的保护和保存提供信息？自20世纪60年代末以来，艺术家们一直在尝试软件，但近年来，基于软件的艺术已经从媒体节中的利基媒体发展到当代艺术博物馆和私人收藏家的主流收藏。虽然基于软件的艺术品保护是当代艺术保护的一个新领域，但一些主要机构的保护人员，如泰特美术馆，古根海姆美术馆和旧金山弗朗西斯科现代艺术博物馆，已经开始为使用这种媒介的艺术品制定长期保护策略。这项比较研究将这些机构的努力与艺术家和游戏行业的现行做法进行了比较，为该领域提供了独特而及时的贡献。在机构内，所进行的处理通常基于艺术家及其技术人员的技术专长，这有助于保护人员了解艺术品生产中所做的选择，从而了解保护的可行性。保护人员将这些治疗和选择置于保护伦理的背景下，应用最小干预，彻底记录和干预可见性等概念。另一个具有类似软件重用用例的不同行业是游戏行业。主要的游戏开发商，如Ubisoft或Electronic Arts，在制作游戏方面进行了大量投资，但随着时间的推移，他们也接受了将游戏发展到新游戏平台的价值。这些公司都有自己的档案和要求，以允许重复使用，这些技术生产环境越来越多地被艺术家使用，例如约翰杰拉德和伊恩郑目前使用的游戏引擎Unity开发他们的工作。这项博士研究将提供一个系统的研究，艺术家正在做什么来保存，记录，维护和保护他们的工作，以及这与他们的生产技术的关系，将其与游戏行业和保护的实践进行比较。基于软件的艺术品必须生存的技术环境的快速变化的性质意味着许多艺术家，特别是那些从90年代和21世纪初开始实践的艺术家，必须解决收藏机构的管理员正在应对的同样问题。为了描述这种干预，艺术家经常使用维护，修理或升级的语言。这项博士研究将考虑在修改和适应技术的社区研究的背景下进行维护的这些做法，探索这三个领域的软件开发人员所处的生态系统的性质，以及它们与更广泛的社会关系和技术的关系。这将使我们了解在博彩业、艺术实践和保护方面的过时问题;探讨意义和理解的差异。这项研究将在软件的保存和文档编制方面做出重大的理论和实践贡献-研究的比较性质将使这三种不同情况下使用的做法可见，并将评估其跨部门的适用性，最终支持新兴的软件艺术保护领域。

The central research questions for this doctorate are:How are artists documenting, preserving and maintaining their software-based art?How do those processes differ from preservation processes within collecting institutions and the gaming industry, and why are they different?What can we learn from the processes and practices of artists and the gaming industry that might inform the conservation and preservation of these works in an institutional context?Artists have been experimenting with software since the late 1960s, however in recent years software-based art has developed from being a niche medium seen in media festivals to entering mainstream collections of contemporary art museums and private collectors. Whilst the conservation of software-based art is a new area of practice for contemporary art conservation, conservators in some major institutions, such as Tate, the Guggenheim and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art have started to develop long term preservation strategies for works of art using this medium. This comparative study looking at these institutional efforts alongside current practice by artists and the gaming industry provides a unique and timely contribution to the field.Within institutions the treatments performed are often based on the technical expertise of an artist and their technicians, which help conservators understand choices made in the production of an artwork, and consequently the options viable for conservation. The conservators place these treatments and choices in the context of conservation ethics, applying concepts like minimum intervention, thorough documentation and visibility of interventions. A different industry with a similar use case of re-use of software is the games industry. Major games developers, such as Ubisoft or Electronic Arts make large investments in producing games but have also embraced the value of evolving games to new gaming platforms over time. These companies have their own archives and requirements to allow re-use, and these technological production environments are increasingly being used by artists, for instance both John Gerrard and Ian Cheng currently use the game engine Unity to develop their work.This doctoral research will provide a systematic study of what artists are doing to preserve, document, maintain and conserve their work, and how this relates to their production technologies comparing this to practice within the gaming industry and conservation. The fast-changing nature of the technological context in which software-based artworks must survive means that many artists, particularly those with practices beginning in the 90s and early 2000s have had to resolve the same problems that conservators in collecting institutions are responding to. To describe such interventions, artist often use the language of maintenance, repair or upgrade. This doctoral study will consider these practices of maintenance within the context of studies of communities who modify and adapt technologies, exploring the nature of the ecosystem in which software developers from these three domains operate and their relationship to broader social relationships to technology. This will inform our understanding of obsolescence in the context of the gaming industry, artistic practice and conservation; probing differences of meaning and understanding.This research will make a significant contribution to theory and practice in the preservation and documentation of software-based art. The comparative nature of the research will make the practices used in these three different contexts visible and will evaluate their applicability across sectors, ultimately supporting the emerging field of the conservation of software-based art.