Restoration of Electronic and Digital Art

The ZKM has special expertise in the conservation and restoration of kinetic art, sound art, video art and computer-based art.

The interdisciplinary team experiments with the results of current research and tests them in the everyday practice. The specialists coming from the fields of restoration, electrical engineering, computer science and art history are thus meeting the conservation challenges associated with the preservation of electronic and computer-based works.

The restoration team of the Departments Wissen and Museum and Exhibition Technology documents and restores works of art that belong to the ZKM collection or are exhibited at the ZKM. At the same time, restorers and technicians are working on the further development of standardised methods of documentation and long-term conservation of electronic and digital works of art. In this context, the ZKM also supports research projects and allows for interns and young researchers to get insight into the daily work practice and the state of research. An example of this is the "Archivists in Residence" programme, which was launched in 2015 by the Karlsruhe State College of Design and the ZKM and ran until 2018.

The restoration team makes it possible to preserve historical works of electronic and digital art of the 20th and 21st centuries in the long term. Thus the history of art, which is always also the history of changing technologies, can be seen and experienced now and in the future. 

The restoration team works closely with the Laboratory for Antiquated Video Systems that belongs to the department ZKM | Wissen. The laboratory is one of the world's leading laboratories for video restoration.