Digital media formats, unlike analog media, may be reproduced with no generation loss; nontheless, they are subject to an ever shortening cycle of market-driven obsolescence.
Real, 2001, p. 213
Some of the extreme maintainance problems arise from works that employ once-common technological parts that have become obsolete. Certain of the colored fluorescent tubes that Dan Flavin used can no longer be produced because of manufacturing hazards arising from the materials, and museums that own Flavin works stockpile the tubes as they can. Similarly, James de Young, chief curator at the Milwaukee Art Museum, thought he had found the answer to the burned-out lightbulbs in Otto piene's Electric Rosebush (1965), a frestanding electronic sculpture made from rose-colored lights, when he heard about a stash of vintage bulbs that even had the right model number. Thinking that he could not only restore the work but service it well into the future, he ordered the lot. He discovered, however, that the filament had changed shape radically during the 1970s, and the newer bulbs would have given the work a completely different appearance. The sculpture remains in storage.
Buskirk, 2000, p.119
