Ethical and Technical Challenges in the Conservation of Digital Process Files

SUMMARY
This article, which grew out of my research at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, will appear in the forthcoming third volume of the Contemporary Art Network (CAN!)'s Contemporary Art Review. The anticipated publishing date in summer 2024.

TITLE
Ethical and Technical Challenges in the Conservation of Digital Process Files

ABSTRACT
Born-digital artworks, like all digital files, may be subject to loss or change when their native software and hardware updates and the original versions cease to be supported. Programs in the Adobe Creative Cloud, including Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects, and Premiere, are ubiquitous in graphic design and visual art, yet they are proprietary, subscription-based software, and this poses a preservation problem for process files native to these programs, should they be viewed in an emulated digital environment in the future.

Beyond the technical challenges inherent in preserving proprietary formats, the question of whether and how to steward digital process materials is sensitive and context-specific. Some artists or designers are willing to make their process materials available for future research, while others prefer to keep their working documents private, either out of concern for potential piracy of their material, or because they believe such access might undermine the impact or conceptual framework of the work itself.

In this article, two case studies are situated within a larger context of conservation ethics and material specificity in time-based media art. The preservation of complex Adobe documents related to the #Combatcovid digital poster series collected by Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum is described alongside video artist Elizabeth Price’s Final Cut Pro process files in which she composes her works. By contrasting the research done by the Cooper Hewitt’s curatorial and conservation staff into preservation standards for layered process files with Price’s artistic archival methods, the article offers technical suggestions for contemporary art conservators working with Adobe process files, while foregrounding larger questions about the boundaries of born-digital artworks themselves.