title: Right Click to Preserve: Preservation, NFTs, and Distributed Ledgers
creators: John Bell Regina Harsanyi Jon Ippolito
abstract: Artists have experimented with cryptocurrency-incentivized distributed ledgers such as blockchains since the advent of Bitcoin. In parallel, crypto advocates have claimed that distributed ledger protocols will ensure an accessible and immutable record of anything registered to it, including artwork. This panel examines this idea with nuance, neither buying into the mass deception behind NFT marketing nor rejecting the reality that a subset of artists are creating significant, challenging works that inherently utilize these technologies. Each of the three panelists considersa specific approach to how preservation professionals can keep such works alive. We then jointly compare their merits in a variety of preservation contexts.
keywords: nft blockchain emulation variable media