Learning from Variable Media Art. Towards Digital Transition for Management and Conservation of Architectural Heritage

The digital transition related to Cultural Heritage is experiencing an acceleration and the deepening of this field is crucial, as demonstrated by ongoing research projects in this specific field and actions to promote its implementation at European and national level through regulations and regular reports. The triad Digitisation, Cultural Heritage and Preservation can be approached from different perspectives: if in the field of architecture one of the issues is to make the preservation, management and updating of cultural heritage data effective, in the field of Variable Media Art (VMA) poses similar questions. Systems developed over the last two decades for the preservation of digital art and emerging works of art supported by new technologies (such as Rizhome.org, Forging the future, DOCAM, Inside Installations Documentation Model, PERICLES, etc.) provide a perspective on the complex management of large digital archives and the accessibility of digital information, which can be useful for other fields of heritage preservation more traditionally related to physical objects and media stability. Certainly knowing what has been experienced so far with the preservation of Variable Media Art and Time-Based Media Arts allows one to conduct some reflections on the aims of the 2022/2023 National Digitisation Plan and its actual potential, as well as on how digitisation is an opportunity to be seized in order to more effectively shift a reductive approach to restoration as a matter of transformation of architecture towards preventive conservation.