With object-based contemporary art, conservators have come to understand that, as with installations, change is sometimes an integral part of the work and need not be uniformly prevented in all cases (q), although conversely, the acceptance of or desire for change does not necessarily make such change inevitable (q).
Real, 2001, p. 217
Display equipment warrants special attention because it presents specific challenges to our ability to display these works in the future as the artist intended. Assigning signficance to components of the installation is dependent of the museum's ability to preserve what is valued. Unavoidable change does not mean that the work was designed to change. Artists and other stakeholders are at liberty to assign significance to a specific piece of display equipment, even if that object is set to become obsolete and fail. Here lies the mub of the problem: display epquipment is certain to fail and to become obsolete, therefore any strong link between specific display equipment and authenticity or value will mean that a degree of loss is inevitable. The stronger and more specific the link, the more vulnerable the work is to loss.
Laurenson, 2004, p. 49
Reflecting the move in contemporary art away from the material object, the conservator's role now encompasses a broader notion of preservation and care. Conservation is no longer focused on interventing to repair an art object; it is now concerned with documentation and determining what change is acceptable and managing those changes.
Laurenson, 2001, p. 260
In the analog realm, migrating obsolete formats to newer formats will lead to repeated 'generation loss', resulting in an increasingly degraded signal and irrecoverable loss of playback quality. Like a medieval painting that has undergone repeated insensitive cleanings, magnetic media, when copied to a new format, becomes more and more remote from what the artist created. Unlike a painting, however - which theoretically can be cleaned with no loss of original material whatsoever - generational loss in reproduced magnetic media is inevitable. (...) Digital media formats, unlike analog media, may be reproduced with no generation loss;
Real, 2001, p.213
