Living Digital Archives: Practices, Projects, Infrastructures

How do we preserve a digital artwork when the software, formats, and technologies it depends on disappear? Beyond files, what needs to be transmitted for a work to still be understood, studied, or reactivated twenty years from now?

For this second gathering with Hexagram, International Digital Arts Alliance (IDAA) will welcome Mourad Bennacer (SAT), continuing the conversation initiated through the Manifesto for a Living Digital Memory, presented at MUTEK Forum 2026.

Artists, researchers, collectives, and organizations are invited to submit an artwork, project, archive, or tool that raises a specific challenge around documentation, preservation, or transmission. Selected projects will be presented during the gathering and become starting points for a collective workshop around one question: what needs to be preserved for a digital artwork to remain alive and transmissible?

How to participate

Submit a short project description (maximum 150 words), accompanied by one image or a link to documentation, and briefly identify what within the project irisks disappearing, becoming inaccessible, or becoming difficult to transmit.

Submission deadline: October 12, 2026.

Submission Form 

Selected participants will be invited to give a 5-minute presentation on October 26, followed by discussion and a collective workshop.

Date: October 26, 2026

Location: Hexagram, Montréal

Participation: Registration required

Open to: Artists, researchers, collectives, organizations, and digital arts practitioners.

The conversations emerging from the workshop will directly inform the ongoing research and development of smART.