Thinking back over this course over the semester I have gained new skills that will help me in my future. I have enjoyed hearing everyone’s differing perspectives. First off, I have learned what Digital Art is, and how it is a continually growing genre. Every time I go online I now analyze all of the different types of digital art I am viewing. I can definitely see more of a trend to want to collect and preserve this type of art in the future.

Project

I thoroughly enjoyed working on my project, and not just because I am a big fan of The Lizzie Bennet Diaries. As a fan I was able to delve into more of why I enjoy the webseries and then view it from an archival mindset. I had to take into account not just the primary art itself, the videos, but also every aspect of the culture around the web series. For The Lizzie Bennet Diaries it is the community that are the real creators. The people influence the art, no matter the medium, and have to power to change its direction.     

I also realized just how important ephemera is to digital art. With analog materials I have always understood this, and found it particularly interesting, but I did not realize it would have the same effect for digital items. Through the process of this project I realized the social media accounts, and feeds, are the ephemera for the web series. The real-time reactions of the fans helped create extra videos and additions to the timelines of the social media accounts. Because of the success of the web series, and subsequent accounts, it lead to the development of sequels and even more similar content.

Class Themes

There were a few topics that have really stuck with me during this course. They even so much as influenced how I interpreted my project. The first is how important significance is to digital art. Providing context, proving the how and why, are just as important as preserving the art itself. Making a case for for the item, whether it is digital or analog, helps with its value in the social memory. The justification is just as important as the digital art itself. When a creator is creating they don’t think about the “whys.” As archivists, when acquiring items we will have to encourage these creators to tell us, or incorporate these “whys” into the work.   

Another topic that has really stuck with me is how hardware and software complement each other; similarly how platforms and formats work together. Platforms provide the framework for the art, whereas the format works within the platform. I have a particular interest in this topic. I find it interesting how certain records can only be played on certain types of machines. Once the platform goes away, the format still exists, but may become irrelevant. Both have their own function, but operate in opposite ways.

Questions

Every time I learned something new in this class I feel as if I would have 1000 more questions. These questions made me dig more and more into the topic and want to learn even more. However, in the long term there are a few questions that we all should consider. With digital art becoming more and more prevalent the topics from this class are just as important as analog topics to consider. As technology keeps advancing and there are newer types of new media, what will this mean for the future of digital art preservation?  As I mentioned previously, there is a need to incorporate the significance into the works from the beginning. That is the main question at hand, how do we energize people to provide significance, and have the creators/users think of the long-term preservation?