A couple of points I like to put.
Its been my experience that most artists working with film and video are more than happy to 
update their storage and their presentation formats, some cases we have moved from umatic (sp) 
to a digital format, and exhibition playback from DVD to hard disk. This trend is growing as digital 
playback gets cheaper and cheaper. Newer battles of presentation formats will happen with the 
advent of HD DVD and Blu-ray format disks, with some artists selling both formats to collectors. 
I would be interested in knowing migration of older net based works, weather artists are happy to 
see them die along with the software, are emulators possible to keep these works alive?
Things do get harder when an artists requires a certain model of hardware, sculpture like Nam 
June Paik’s Moon is the Oldest T.V, currently part of the Pompidou centres new media 1965 -2005 
touring show requires 11 old black and white monitors, we source these from everywhere but 
there will be a point when we wont be able replace them, what happens then? A work allowed to 
die, the loss of a work for an institution. Char Davis said she would be happy to let her 1995 work 
osmose die once the reality engine computer that is it’s home gives up the ghost, but what if it 
was owned by an institution, is it not right that they try and save it, move it to a new machine, 
change the coding to keep it accessible to us.

Touching on permanent installations and maintenance, the normal life expectance of most kit is 
three years, most manufactures wont honour the warrantee, if the equipment is used outside 
normal use, which can be using a projector for more that 4 hours a day, yes 4 hours, this leads 
into costly maintenance contracts, even when the kit is within its statutory 12 months of purchase 
warrantee.  
So as long as the renewal budget is there to replace the hardware every few years’ works can go 
on and on. 

As Mark Wallingers statement about his being first work of permanent new media art, well he 
might be right even Jem Finders longplay 1000 year Composition only has a 994 year life span left