Venice, Winter Morning on the Grand Canal, January 2011

500 Year DocumentationFrancis T. MarchesePace University, New Yorkhttp://csis.pace.edu/~marchesefmarchese@pace.edu

Which of the following artworks will be viewable 500

years in the future?

Giovanni Bellini, Madonna and Child with SS. Nicholas, Peter, Mark, and Benedict, 1488.

Tempera on panel, S. Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, Venice

I Want You to Want Me (2008), Jonathan Harris and Sep Kamvar, MoMA.

Interactive, distributed client-server architecture (C++, Java, PHP, OpenGL, SQL). Servers run UNIX and client runs Windows XP.

Long March: Restart (2008), Feng Mengbo, MoMA.

Large-scale interactive video-game installation. Proprietary game engine.

What challenges do contemporary digital art conservators face if they

wish to preserve digital art for installation in the distant future?

What will constitute future conservation practice?

Does any of this really matter because we will all be long dead in

500 years?