Soru

For much of the twentieth century, Western conservation philosophy was dominated by the principle of material authenticity, codified in Cesare Brandi’s seminal restoration theory and subsequent international charters. Under this orthodox paradigm, an artwork's ontological identity is strictly tied to its physical substrate; any preservation effort must prioritize the physical integrity of original materials and adhere to the doctrine of reversibility, ensuring that modern interventions can be undone without damaging historical fabric. While this framework functions reasonably well for static, traditional media such as easel paintings or marble sculpture, it has reached an impasse in the conservation of time-based media and digital art, whose aesthetic essence is fundamentally procedural, interactive, and algorithmic rather than static and material.

When digital or software-based installations face hardware obsolescence, traditional materialists advocate for "hardware preservation"—maintaining original cathode-ray tube monitors, mechanical drives, or vintage microprocessors. Yet this approach invariably succumbs to physical entropy: vintage components degrade irreversibly, transforming functional artworks into inert museum relics. In response, media conservators have increasingly turned to "emulation" and "source-code migration," recreating the computational logic and interactive behavior of software on modern operating systems. Materialist purists reject these techniques, alleging that emulation produces mere digital facsimiles and breaches the imperative of material continuity by discarding the original physical artifacts.

However, this criticism rests on a categorical confusion regarding the nature of digital works. Following philosopher Nelson Goodman’s distinction between autographic arts (like oil painting, where physical history determines identity) and allographic arts (like musical compositions, which are instantiated across multiple distinct performances guided by a score), algorithmic art is fundamentally allographic. The source code and operational logic function as a computational score; each execution of the software is an authentic performance rather than a counterfeit reproduction. To prioritize the deteriorating electronic shell over the execution of the dynamic process is to preserve the corpse of the artwork at the expense of its vital aesthetic meaning.

Therefore, preserving time-based media requires abandoning the rigid materialist orthodoxy of traditional restoration in favor of an ethos of dynamic functional fidelity. By recognizing that authenticity in digital art resides in the accurate realization of its algorithmic behavior and interactive experience, conservators can deploy virtualization and code migration not as compromises of authenticity, but as the only viable means of maintaining the living vitality of the work.

Which one of the following most accurately expresses the central thesis of the passage?