SOFTWARE CONSERVATION IN RHIZOME’S EAAS INTERFACE A Conservator's Take on its Terminology and Aptitude

Sammanfattning

Software creations depend on computing environments that become obsolete. Emulation can recreate those environments, but the tools built for this work speak the language of computer science, not conservation. This leaves little room for the conservator's reasoning — the judgments behind a preservation decision, and not just its technical settings. This thesis examines the Demo-UI, the interface of the Emulation-as-a-Service (EaaS) framework as deployed at Rhizome, asking how its vocabulary relates to conservation practice and where a conservator can document preservation decisions within it.The study combines a systematic terminology inventory of the Demo-UI — documenting every field, button, and setting visible in the interface — with a walkthrough of three case studies preserved at Rhizome: Tod dem Fernsehen (R.A.M.S., 1993–1994), Bomb Iraq (Cory Arcangel, 2005), and Every Icon (John F. Simon Jr., 1997). A comparative study of Rhizome's ArtBase catalog and the Stabilize interface shows how the same concepts are described differently in related systems. The study produces two contributions: first, it identifies four existing free-text fields in the Demo-UI where conservation information — rationale, condition, risk, authorship — can be entered today without changes to the software; second, it identifies six interface elements that need clarification through expanded abbreviations, tooltips, or bug fixes. The discussion draws on Deleuze’s concepts of the rhizome and difference in repetition, Apprich’s media genealogy of net cultures, and the conservation values tradition of Ruskin, Riegl, and Viollet-le-Duc. The thesis argues that the Demo-UI already has places where conservation documentation can go, and that making the interface's own vocabulary more transparent is a necessary step toward using it as a conservation tool — one in which the conservator can record not only how an environment is configured, but why.