“How Can We Know the Dancer from the Dance?” Intention and the Preservation of Digital Objects

This article considers some of the issues created in the preservation of digital artifacts by the entanglement of object creator, mediating processes, and object viewer. This includes the relationship between format and software characterization, the sometimes complex manner in which software engineering practice, even best practice, complicates the use and intelligibility of software over the long term, and the need to preserve not just versions, but also variant renderings of the same version of an artifact.