Representation of New Media Art for Preservation: Interactions, Variations, and the Flow of Information

Introduction Preservation and representation of digital art presents a significant challenge for curators, archivists and artists. The most notable problem is the fundamentally interactive nature of this evolving art form. Because there are no clearly defined frameworks for the authentic representation of the variations resulting from interactions, curators and archivists are currently deciding on a case by case basis which interactions should be preserved, who should be able to interact with a given piece, and how to represent those interactions in a meaningful and objective way. Not only is this method problematic from a representational standpoint, it’s very time-consuming. My thesis will attempt to resolve some of these complexities by making connections between this new art form and an established one, namely music; assessing the representational characteristics of music’s notation system and exploring the methods by which musicians and conductors handle musical interaction.