Conservation case study: TraceNoizer by LAN

This report provides a base for the preservation and presentation of TraceNoizer, a web-based artwork by the artist collective LAN. Annina Rüst, Fabian Thommen, Roman Abt, Silvan Zurbruegg and Marc Lee created this work in 2001.

Until 2003, TraceNoizer was presented at festivals several times. It was online until the beginning of 2006 as TraceNoizer.org. From 2008 until August 2011 TraceNoizer went online again as tracenoizer.net, but it did not work anymore. Since 2011 to 2018, it has been offline. In 2017, the House of Electronic Arts acquired the work for their collection.

In order to present the artwork again, it had to be adapted. This did not only encompass technical alterations but also included adaptations regarding the change of the techno-cultural context of the artwork. Hence, this report describes and analyses the work in order to be able to suggest different preservation options.

The sources for this report encompass an artist interview conducted on the 2017/06/22 with Annina Rüst, Fabian Thommen and Marc Lee (s. chapter 1.4), different documentary Web sites (s. chapter 1.5) and the supplied digital archive of TraceNoizer (s. chapter 1.3 and 3.1) itself.

The TraceNoizer case study was part of Claudia Röck’s PhD research about preservation strategies for software-based artworks. This report was written in the scope of this research.