Talk: The ZKM Digital Art Collection
Morgan Stricot, Beatrice Zaidenberg
25th October 2023, 19:00
Zoom
Morgan Stricot and Beatrice Zaidenberg introduce the ZKM Centre for Art and Media's pioneering digital art collection. They discuss landmark works across laserdisc, virtual reality, body-tracking and biological art, and explain how ZKM acquires source code, hardware, spare parts and artist know-how alongside international collaborators to preserve complex born-digital works.
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Video Recording
Morgan Stricot and Beatrice Zaidenberg examine how ZKM collects, exhibits and preserves digital and biologically informed artworks. Examples from interactive installations, robotic systems and recent exhibitions show that acquisition involves transferring practical knowledge as well as obtaining objects and files. Zaidenberg explores artworks that investigate coexistence between organic life and artificial agents, emphasising maintenance, visitor interaction and unpredictable behaviour. Robotic swarms require charging, repair and supervision, while living installations introduce microbial growth, biological care and institutional safety negotiations. Stricot describes a media-archaeological approach that retains historical hardware and software environments where possible, supported by spare parts and specialist expertise. Preservation planning begins with conversations with artists, source code, component lists, build instructions and documentation of installation choices. Case studies reveal how discontinued motors, failed touchscreens and obsolete software create cascading dependencies that can force complete rewrites. Other works migrate successfully because their code remains compact and uses widely supported libraries. Discussion addresses retrocomputing communities, emulation, conservation networks and the distinction between original artworks, reconstructions and documentation. The speakers stress that conserving output alone can erase technological history and the artist’s relationship with a particular medium. Regular exhibition becomes preventive conservation, exposing failures early and keeping technical skills and knowledge active.
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About the Event
Morgan Stricot and Beatrice Zaidenberg outline the ZKM Centre for Art and Media's pioneering role in collecting and preserving digital art, explaining how its holdings of roughly one thousand digital works, including around two hundred software-based pieces, demand constant curatorial and conservation attention. Stricot surveys landmark works from the collection, spanning laserdisc installations, SGI-based virtual reality, body-tracking interfaces and biological art, while noting ZKM's commitment to redressing the historical under-representation of women artists. Zaidenberg then discusses recent exhibitions such as Biomedia, The Beauty of Early Life and Peter Weibel's final project, Renaissance 3.0, which bring living organisms, robotics and scientific collaboration into the gallery and stretch conventional museum practice. Stricot details the institution's proactive acquisition workflow, gathering source code, hardware specifications, spare parts and artist know-how to future-proof complex works, and illustrates the challenges through case studies including Interactive Plant Growing, Empathy Swarm and A.rot. She emphasises that exhibition itself is a form of preventive conservation, since dormant technological systems often deteriorate beyond recovery. Throughout the conversation, the speakers stress collaboration across conservation, computer science, engineering and artistic communities, and acknowledge that questions of authenticity, migration and obsolescence remain central to the long-term stewardship of born-digital and bio-digital artworks.
About the Speakers
Morgan Stricot
Beatrice Zaidenberg