Google Arts & Culture and Rhizome collaborate on a project around digital preservation and technological obsolescence

Google Arts & Culture and Rhizome inaugurate a partnership to highlight the risk to art and digital culture posed by technological obsolescence and digital preservation. 

This collaboration is the creation of tools for digital preservation and continuous access to existing digital-born artefacts. Since 1999, Rhizome’s digital preservation program has been a social memory for Internet users and networked cultures through the creation of free, open-source and user-friendly software tools that promote decentralized and vernacular archives.

In addition, as part of this partnership, Google has subscribed to the cloud infrastructure required by Rhizome’s digital preservation tools, significantly increasing our capacity and ability to meet the access needs of artists and Other institutions.

Google Arts & Culture and Rhizome brought together researchers and digital artists working in the fields of preservation and conservation for an event in London to examine the current state of digital preservation of art. From a conversation between Vint Cerf (Google’s Chief Internet Evangelist) and Dragan Espenschied, a preservation specialist for Rhizome, speakers spoke of topics ranging from the distribution and preservation of art software to community preservation.

Learn more about this project here