3.4Art+ Australia
Art Critic [Freelance]
A long-form critical essay on digital art preservation for Art+Australia.

I wrote a long-form essay for Art+Australia examining the systemic disappearance of digital art in Australia and the institutional, economic and technological forces that shape its erasure. The piece analysed government-funded initiatives, GLAM sector failures, national preservation projects and the broader global context of digital instability and obsolescence.

Drawing on interviews, policy reports, media art histories and digital preservation frameworks, the essay argued that institutional neglect is not accidental but structurally produced—an ongoing cycle where lack of strategy leads to invisibility, and invisibility justifies further neglect. The writing blended research-driven analysis with cultural commentary, linking digital disappearance to broader issues of memory, platform dependency and the political economy of attention.




Selected Copy [Excerpt]
One would think that the Australian government, having funded projects like Artbank, GUAM’s digital art collection, Running Dog, and Prototype, would at least preserve them as proof of investment. But as Mayer-Schönberger argues, digital memory since Web 2.0 has been less about knowledge and more about leverage. Institutions resurface artworks when it serves their reputation, much like social media users dredging up old posts to sustain a public dogpile. It appears that the predatory logic of today’s attention (or memory, in this context) economy—deeply entrenched in platforms that organise and monetise information like Google, Amazon, Meta, and TikTok—has shaped cultural preservation itself. Digital artworks and archives are no longer valued for their historical or artistic significance alone but for their ability to generate engagement, justify funding cycles, or bolster institutional credibility.

Even the public is catching on to the cracks in the myth of digital permanence. TikTok user @remasel experienced this firsthand when she searched for a beloved but niche 90s children’s animation, assuming it would be on YouTube. After thirty minutes of dead ends, she found only a bootleg copy on a sketchy website. The realisation hit hard: ‘the internet is NOT forever ’. Her viral video, now at 2.5 million views, struck a nerve. ‘Suddenly I went from “hoarder” to “archivist.” Finally,’ commented @winzer, capturing a growing public awareness—if institutions won’t preserve digital culture, individuals might have to do it themselves.

This tendency to perform progress while sidestepping its material implications is everywhere. An art university without an art gallery is as senseless as software without hardware. Just like a digital art collection with no evolving archival strategy, both suggest an infrastructure that no longer serves its cultural purpose. The same goes for blockbuster art museums that digitise the experience of their non-digital collections—AR apps that animate paintings, clunky 3D walkthroughs, architectured selfie spots—while neglecting digital-born works. The 2024 Whitney Biennial’s AI theme is a case in point, framing artificial intelligence as a central premise while only a handful of artists actually used the technology. As new media theorist Wendy Hui Kyong Chun observes in Programmed Visions: Software and Memory, every use of software as metaphor, here, as a hollow stand-in for progress, entails an act of faith. 15 And as people are beginning to realise, that faith, like so many institutional links to the digital, was built on empty promises.