DPC member organisations from Australasia and Asia-Pacific will discuss their experiences with holding, exhibiting, and preserving digital content that functions differently from the stable, linear or analogue material traditionally held by archives. Much, or arguably even most, digital content does not exist as a stable object, does not have an ‘original’, incorporates collaborative elements, changes itself through its use, or preserves various states of decay of an analogue original. This inherently ‘unruly’ content challenges many of the existing concepts of archival collection.
While the use of digital technologies for preservation has its own challenges, the preservation of these specifically ‘unruly’ digital objects brings up many additional questions. Such as: which release of a piece of software is representative? How do you preserve digital data whose value lies in its use rather than its storage? What do you choose to preserve when a digital artwork evolves as part of its exhibition or use? How are digital preservation decisions made in today’s technological moment themselves preserved to inform those who will work with the content in the future? These and many other questions are being addressed in practice by those dealing with the preservation challenges posed by the ‘unruly’ digital. Panel members will explain how they are addressing their own specific ‘unruly’ digital material, followed by a discussion with the audience about how and where these encounters challenge traditional archival concepts and what responses are being adopted.