Lectures Digital Heritage
Leiden University, 2025-2026, semester 2
BA Kunstgeschiedenis; BA Arts Media and Society; Pre-master MA Arts and
Culture’ Minor Museums, Heritage and Collections
Lectures 1-11
Lecture 1
Introduction
Walter Benjamin thought in the 1930s that cinema would democratize art.
Because film is always reproducible, he thought it could become available
to anyone. He saw in it potential for a revolutionary kind of art.
Heritage is about passing something on. In certain contexts, it is a very
gendered term: in certain countries and classes, only males can inherit, for
example. In other contexts, it has a connection to nationalism and the
fatherland.
What is cultural heritage?
Heritage is our legacy from the past, what we live with today, and what we
pass on to future generations. A heritage is something that is, or should
be, passed from generation to generation because it is valued.
Cultural heritage are those sites, objects and intangible things that have
cultural, historical, aesthetic, archaeological, scientific, ethnological or
anthropological value to groups and individuals.
These definitions can be problematized. Who determines what is valued?
And this also changes over time. How do we know what we need to
preserve for future generations? What is the past?
There is a difference between the past and history. The past is everything,
but history is already more specified. It carries in it a value judgement, it
focuses on the parts of the past that are said to have meaning.
What is digital heritage
Digital heritage is heritage that is created digitally or converted into digital
form from existing analogue resources. Digital materials include texts,
databases, still and moving images, audio, graphics, software, and web
pages, among a wide and growing range of formats. They are frequently
ephemeral and require maintenance and management to be retained.
,Are social media posts digital heritage? They are a form of creative and
cultural expression of a society, especially for younger generations. And
they can also have an artistic side to it and be original artistic productions
(edits etc.). We should also be cautious to write social media art off
because it is popular culture/low brow.
It is also tricky to make the difference between digital and analogue
heritage very strict. Often, it blends into each other.
Thwaites article
Different definitions/approaches to heritage:
- Virtual heritage (instrumental definition: the use of technologies)
- UNESCO digital heritage definition
- Heritage as information complexes
Thwaites also makes a direct correlation between digital heritage and the
wide availability of computers.
Lecture 2
Digital Born Heritage: Artefacts and (web)sites
Born digital media are created digitally first. This is a recent technology.
Early examples of digital born heritage: wayback machine, De Digitale
Stad.
Early digital heritage is often overridden by later, ‘better’ versions. An
example are newer editions of games. This can make the original/first
versions very hard to find.
Thwaites argues that digital heritage is more ephemeral (‘vluchtig’) than
older/analogue heritage. The lecturer questions whether this is true. Is it
true that older heritage is more easily preservable? Can we really know
that, because we only know what has been preserved but not what has
not?
From class discussion:
It is the case, however, that digital infrastructures become increasingly
difficult to understand. And often, you will need extra technologies to
understand them. With analogue media, like pen and paper, this is not the
case.
What is currently preserved about daily life is more democratic than it
could have been in the past.
What is digital born art? One definition: artistic materials that are created
with digital technologies.
, Albuquerque article
- Albuquerque is an academic and an artist. This is an interesting
perspective. In the article she explains how she as an artist thinks
about how to preserve digital born art.
- The work of the artist in the article (Albuquerque herself) is not
purely digital, but she categorizes it as digital born. This evokes
questions about when something is ‘digital born’.
- She argues that with digital art, there is no room for things to fall
between the cracks. If you do not do something to preserve it
quickly, it is not going to survive (ephemerality).
- She discusses how some artists want their digital born art to be
perishable, intentionally. Recommends we pay attention to the
wishes of the artist.
- She argues we live in an era of constant change, created by
(technological) media. The globalisation of these media and the
information shared via them creates constant flux. The internet as a
global time machine (see also Thwaites article).
- She uses case studies from the domain of practical research:
academic research + artistic practices.
Strategies for the future to prevent ‘loss’ according to Albuquerque:
- Preserving databases. This is difficult, because they are often not
static. If you preserve only the raw data, context and functionalities
are lost.
- The digitalization of physical objects: scanning/ 3D rendering.
The focus is more on the digitalization of analogue heritage than on
preserving digital born heritage.
Preserving digital born heritage is difficult. It is a complex of technical,
material and contextual components that all need to be preserved.
- Hardware.
- Raw data.
- Display equipment
- File formats: not all formats are durable.
- Contextual documentation: e.g., information about setting up an
installation.
- Media playback: the environment in which a digital file can be
played and reproduced.
Two dominant strategies for preserving digital heritage:
Leiden University, 2025-2026, semester 2
BA Kunstgeschiedenis; BA Arts Media and Society; Pre-master MA Arts and
Culture’ Minor Museums, Heritage and Collections
Lectures 1-11
Lecture 1
Introduction
Walter Benjamin thought in the 1930s that cinema would democratize art.
Because film is always reproducible, he thought it could become available
to anyone. He saw in it potential for a revolutionary kind of art.
Heritage is about passing something on. In certain contexts, it is a very
gendered term: in certain countries and classes, only males can inherit, for
example. In other contexts, it has a connection to nationalism and the
fatherland.
What is cultural heritage?
Heritage is our legacy from the past, what we live with today, and what we
pass on to future generations. A heritage is something that is, or should
be, passed from generation to generation because it is valued.
Cultural heritage are those sites, objects and intangible things that have
cultural, historical, aesthetic, archaeological, scientific, ethnological or
anthropological value to groups and individuals.
These definitions can be problematized. Who determines what is valued?
And this also changes over time. How do we know what we need to
preserve for future generations? What is the past?
There is a difference between the past and history. The past is everything,
but history is already more specified. It carries in it a value judgement, it
focuses on the parts of the past that are said to have meaning.
What is digital heritage
Digital heritage is heritage that is created digitally or converted into digital
form from existing analogue resources. Digital materials include texts,
databases, still and moving images, audio, graphics, software, and web
pages, among a wide and growing range of formats. They are frequently
ephemeral and require maintenance and management to be retained.
,Are social media posts digital heritage? They are a form of creative and
cultural expression of a society, especially for younger generations. And
they can also have an artistic side to it and be original artistic productions
(edits etc.). We should also be cautious to write social media art off
because it is popular culture/low brow.
It is also tricky to make the difference between digital and analogue
heritage very strict. Often, it blends into each other.
Thwaites article
Different definitions/approaches to heritage:
- Virtual heritage (instrumental definition: the use of technologies)
- UNESCO digital heritage definition
- Heritage as information complexes
Thwaites also makes a direct correlation between digital heritage and the
wide availability of computers.
Lecture 2
Digital Born Heritage: Artefacts and (web)sites
Born digital media are created digitally first. This is a recent technology.
Early examples of digital born heritage: wayback machine, De Digitale
Stad.
Early digital heritage is often overridden by later, ‘better’ versions. An
example are newer editions of games. This can make the original/first
versions very hard to find.
Thwaites argues that digital heritage is more ephemeral (‘vluchtig’) than
older/analogue heritage. The lecturer questions whether this is true. Is it
true that older heritage is more easily preservable? Can we really know
that, because we only know what has been preserved but not what has
not?
From class discussion:
It is the case, however, that digital infrastructures become increasingly
difficult to understand. And often, you will need extra technologies to
understand them. With analogue media, like pen and paper, this is not the
case.
What is currently preserved about daily life is more democratic than it
could have been in the past.
What is digital born art? One definition: artistic materials that are created
with digital technologies.
, Albuquerque article
- Albuquerque is an academic and an artist. This is an interesting
perspective. In the article she explains how she as an artist thinks
about how to preserve digital born art.
- The work of the artist in the article (Albuquerque herself) is not
purely digital, but she categorizes it as digital born. This evokes
questions about when something is ‘digital born’.
- She argues that with digital art, there is no room for things to fall
between the cracks. If you do not do something to preserve it
quickly, it is not going to survive (ephemerality).
- She discusses how some artists want their digital born art to be
perishable, intentionally. Recommends we pay attention to the
wishes of the artist.
- She argues we live in an era of constant change, created by
(technological) media. The globalisation of these media and the
information shared via them creates constant flux. The internet as a
global time machine (see also Thwaites article).
- She uses case studies from the domain of practical research:
academic research + artistic practices.
Strategies for the future to prevent ‘loss’ according to Albuquerque:
- Preserving databases. This is difficult, because they are often not
static. If you preserve only the raw data, context and functionalities
are lost.
- The digitalization of physical objects: scanning/ 3D rendering.
The focus is more on the digitalization of analogue heritage than on
preserving digital born heritage.
Preserving digital born heritage is difficult. It is a complex of technical,
material and contextual components that all need to be preserved.
- Hardware.
- Raw data.
- Display equipment
- File formats: not all formats are durable.
- Contextual documentation: e.g., information about setting up an
installation.
- Media playback: the environment in which a digital file can be
played and reproduced.
Two dominant strategies for preserving digital heritage:
