I’ve spoken many times about how art is one of the most intrinsically human things in the world. Not just for the inherent value it has, but for the utter uniqueness of its creation. No other species on earth – at least that we know of – is capable of creating art for its own sake. Nor are they, as much as we are aware, capable of appreciating art… at least not in the way that we humans are.
But another important aspect of art and its creation that is sometimes less appreciated is the lasting nature of it. Outside of those works of art that by their very medium cannot exist for long periods of time – live music or ice sculpture, to name but a few examples – it is relatively taken for granted in the modern era that once a given piece of art is created, it will remain and persist going forward through time – able to be appreciated, enjoyed, reevaluated, and critiqued by current and future generations. Regardless of the quality of any given piece of art, its immortality is relatively assured.
At least, thathas been the prevailing thought… until recently. In the modern era of media, particularly in the visual arts, the current ecosystem has now begun challenging those notions of what it means to create art and its expected availability to the public. What does that mean for the future of art? What does that mean for the artist? Let’s discuss…
Historical Art Preservation
Perhaps the best place to start any such discussion regarding the preservation of art is in regard to the ways and manners in which art has historically been preserved. In the modern era, we still retain access to some of the earliest works of art made by man – be they crude cave paintings or rudimentary sculptures. That said, many of these works of art exist for us to enjoy and appreciate today not because of any forethought in terms of their creators in regards to preservation, but rather as a result of chance. Certain cave paintings were protected from the elements by virtue of the fact that they existed inside of caves (and were thus shielded from things like rain and sun). Many of the sculptures that were buried in the ground remain in good condition because they are carved into stone and are thus resilient, in and of themselves.
However, as humanity began to advance and new types of art were created across mediums, the idea of a certain degree of preservation began to come forward. This was not necessarily out of some duty to future generations, but more likely due to a degree of prestige. After all, the finest works of art were usually owned by or created for those in positions of great power. Kings or pharaohs or noblemen. These individuals took great pride in their ownership of these fine works and used them as an example of their success. These artworks were, in effect, status symbols. (This is not to downplay the importance of these works of art or their beauty, but rather just a statement of fact.) Because these artworks were so valued, and their owners had the requisite manpower and resources, many of these works of art were protected from either being destroyed or lost. It also allowed certain pieces of artwork to gain notoriety and prestige.
This is not to say that over the centuries many great works of art weren’t lost – because they most certainly were. Either because of natural disasters or war or sheer negligence, there were many things created that are now lost to the sands of time. For every great work we know of that disappeared in a given event (such as the burning of the Library of Alexandria), there are probably 50 others that we don’t even know we’re missing. It’s certainly a shame, though it is also to be expected given the sheer time scale involved.
Still, it says a lot that so many works of art created centuries (or sometimes even millennia) ago are still around to be appreciated today. It is also perhaps unsurprising that, going forward, humanity recognized the importance of preserving not only these works of art, but the ones continuing to be created.
Preservation is Key
So, while I am loathe to give any specific dates, I will begin speaking in generalities about the period of time between the early 1900s and the year 2000 or so.
In this era, not only did humanity begin taking extra special care of those works of art from previous generations – placing them inside museums or locking them away in private collections – but they also started thinking more broadly about how to preserve those artworks that were only just now coming into existence. While the idea of preserving the written word had been around for quite some time, the advent of wax cylinders allowed for the first time the ability to catalog and preserve not just the arrangement of music for future performances, but specific performances of that music.
It was quite the revelation. No longer did you have to be present at the playing of a particular piece at a given point in time to enjoy it. Now, with the right equipment, anyone could enjoy their favorite composition over and over, pretty much anywhere they wanted.
This same mentality would (to a lesser extent) be applied to early motion pictures and later television. While there was considerably less access on the consumer side, in terms of repeated viewings at their leisure, most studios and networks kept archival copies of many films and later television shows. This allowed them to sometimes release existing movies back to the public, exposing them to both new audiences and allowing old audiences the opportunity to enjoy them again. For television shows, this eventually led to the idea of the rerun – re-showing existing episodes of popular media to capitalize on its success. While this was no doubt done more as a means of cost saving and continuing to profit off of investment dollars already spent, it had the add-on effect of making these particular works of art continually available to the public (to one degree or another).
All of this would eventually reach a kind of zenith with the introduction of home media. By allowing the public the ability to buy their own personal copies of movies (and then later television shows) on mediums such as tape and disc, it not only allowed for a greater access to these media for the general public, it also further protected them against disappearance. After all, the more copies of anything that exist in the world, the less likely that thing is to be erased or lost to history. It is, on a grander scale, the same mentality that those in the tech industry have about maintaining backups of any piece of data. Only, in this case, rather than personal data, this is a sort of cultural heritage of artwork.
During that century, access to art of all mediums only continued to grow. Certain notable works of art (such as the Mona Lisa or the great pyramids) we’re more available to be appreciated from afar – be that in photographs, or eventually on the internet. (In truth, you could probably write an entire book on the way in which the mere existence of the internet has changed the ability for people to interact with art, but such a discussion is itself far outside the scope of the current topic… even though it is inherently linked to it.)
Despite all these wonderful advancements, however, a fledgling medium that was only just coming into its own during this time began to lay the seeds of the problem we now find ourselves facing today…
Video Games and the Problem with Preservation
Interactive artwork, more colloquially known in the modern era as video games, got its start in the 1970s. Beginning with rudimentary computer programs, it would eventually find its way into the mainstream with the release of not only game cabinets in arcades but home consoles such as the Atari 2600. For the first time in history, the audience of a piece of art was not merely expected to observe it, but rather interact with it – to bring it to life via their own inputs. To interact with each other through the medium of the artwork itself.
For much of their early history, however, video games were viewed more akin to toys than to actual works of art. This is partially because of their popularity with children, but arguably even more linked to the glacial pace of cultural acceptance regarding any new medium. It takes time for the establishment and cultural systems to eventually recognize the true potential of any given advancement, be that from a systems perspective or an artistic one.
Partially as a result of these cultural attitudes, and also partially as a result of the rapidly advancing pace of technology within the medium, the idea of preserving video games for future generations wasn’t really one that existed within the cultural conscience. Video game systems were each usually followed by a new iteration that promised better graphics, more complexity, and even more depth. While older games could still be experienced by playing them on the existing systems in the world, rarely were they ported in their original forms to the more modern systems. And forget about actually being able to play the existing copies of the media on the next generation – cartridges were different not only between manufacturers but also between each generation.
Put more plainly: it meant that there was no way to play your original copy of Super Mario Brothers on your Super Nintendo. If you wanted to re-experience that game in its original incarnation, you would either need to buy the repackaged version of it with its two sequels or, in the case of most games, purchase the original hardware on which it was intended to be played. This effectively limited quite fiercely the potential audience for any given game, as it meant that only those people that owned both a copy of it and the required hardware where ever able to experience it (at the time or into the future). And, since existing consuls were eventually supplanted with newer ones, it meant that as time went on, it became even more difficult to find both original copies and hardware. Or, at least, more expensive.
And this is all besides the difficulty that came with trying to catch up on or experience all entries in a given game franchise. As an easy example, let’s take Nintendo‘s beloved franchise, Metroid. The first entry in this franchise was released on the original NES and was eventually followed up by a direct sequel on the handheld system, the Gameboy. The third entry, Super Metroid, picked up right where the story left off from the second game, but could only be played on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. The eventual fourth entry in the franchise, coming nearly a decade later, would find itself on the Gameboy Advance. Thus, for the better part of three decades, the only way any one person could experience the entire story of this franchise would be by owning 3 separate game systems on top of all necessary copies of these games. [Note: While it can be argued that some of these problems have been marginally alleviated in the past decade via virtual consoles or access via paid continual subscription models, these solutions are still not wide sweeping, nor are they a complete replacement for the permanence and originality of experience that comes with playing original hardware.]
But I also don’t want to present the situation as though publishers were merely restricting access to previous works of art out of some malicious desire to bury them… though, those arguments can certainly be made in certain cases. No, moreover – many of these issues really resulted more from practicality and financial incentives… or a lack thereof. You see, transferring any given game from one system to the next was not as easy as just pressing copy and paste. Usually, different systems had entirely different ways of reading and displaying code. Meaning, if you did indeed want to try and bring an existing game to a modern console, it would often need a good deal of work done to ensure that the old code could run on the new hardware in a way that most closely replicated its original implementation. Never mind the fact that the actual controllers themselves might well be quite different, to a point that it would at least change a certain degree of the user experience.
Plus, beyond the difficulty of doing so from a technical perspective, the time required to do so for any given game could sometimes be quite intensive. This requires people who might otherwise be working on new games to be paid to update and modernize older games. Older games that, even if they were successful and popular, likely wouldn’t make the kinds of financial returns that a new game might make… never mind the same mentality when applied to games that were already less than popular upon their initial release. Boiled down to its essence, this often meant that older games were effectively forgotten and locked to outdated hardware – not as a result of any ill intent, but just as a matter of practicality.
But, as unfortunate as those circumstance may be, for a great many reasons, these issues did not plague audio-visual media such as movies and television shows. At least not until recently…
Streaming and Lost Media
I will first begin this section with a caveat: there have always been Works of audio-visual media that have been lost to time. Be that through fires of archival sites, negligence in the case of the producer, or the lack of a strong financial incentive. That said, these instances – in my opinion – are markedly different than the seismic cultural shift in which we now find ourselves. They are, in effect, less systemic. At least, to me. With that out of the way…
As mentioned before, the golden age of physical media eventually found itself subsumed by the advent of streaming services. Beginning in its more modern form with Netflix, and eventually becoming the crowded landscape it is today, the general consumer became less concerned with owning personal copies of media they loved and more accustomed to having perennial access via perpetual payment to online services. In some regards, this was a cost savings to consumers (though that can be debated), but it was also a savings in terms of physical space. No longer did you need to keep up with and store tapes or discs – everything was available to you pretty much anywhere you were. Sure, this came with the downside of sometimes having shows or movies you loved no longer available on the services on which you have come to expect them – thus necessitating either not seeing them or needing to purchase a digital copy or another subscription – but for the most part, for the average person, the upsides outweighed the negatives.
After all, while the system of segmenting content across a variety of platforms, each with its own paywall and fee structure, was quite costly and restrictive, the works of art themselves were not necessarily lost – access to them was just less convenient. You could still watch The Office, for example – but rather than doing so on Netflix, you would now need to sign up for Peacock. Without the benefit of owning your own copy, your ability to enjoy said media was limited by the scope of subscription services to which you were subscribed. But, crucially, you were not inherently prevented from accessing this media. You could either buy a physical copy, thus negating the cycle of perpetual payment, or you could bite the bullet and sign up for yet another service. Regardless, the show or movie continued to exist despite your personal access.
However, we now live in a world where fewer movies and television shows are getting physical releases than in decades past. This is particularly relevant when it comes to those media created exclusively for such streaming services. Be they television shows or movies, while some of them are lucky enough to get such standalone releases, many are forever locked into the digital ecosystem for which they were created. While one can certainly argue against the gating off of such content (as I have in the past),the media is still available, as mentioned above. That said, in recent years, a disturbing new trend has begun to rear, its head in the marketplace– that of lost media.
So, what exactly is lost media? Well, the name is quite revealing: it is any piece of media which has found itself inaccessible to the public through any legal means. This effectively renders the consumer (and viewer) without choice or ability to interact with or enjoy that piece of art going forward. (And while we could certainly dovetail that particular discussion into one of piracy – and the moral and legal gray area that comes with it, particularly in regards to such lost media – we will push that particular discussion aside for the moment, and only focus on legal availability.)
And how exactly does a piece of media find itself lost in the modern era? Putting aside any such unforeseen consequences such as entire buildings or servers going up in smoke, the primary way in which such media is typically lost revolves around one of two things: corporate decision-making and the shuttering of a company. Starting with the latter first, it is perhaps unsurprising that, if a given streaming service ends up closing its doors, the content on said service effectively disappears. While there is some degree of mitigation, if another media company ends up buying the rights to said media (as has happened in the past), that is both not always the case and rarely exhaustive. After all, the new media company probably wouldn’t find it financially viable to re-host (on their own dime) every single piece of content from the previous. They would no doubt more likely focus on only those pieces of art that were most financially lucrative. That leads us nicely into the next (and, sadly, more frequent) methodology…
Corporate Decision-making
You see, over the past decade or so of the rise in streaming culture and services, people have become accustomed to the fact that any original shows or movies hosted on a given service will always be available for viewing on said service, provided you’re willing to pay the price of admission. Think of things like House of Cards and Stranger Things on Netflix, or Game of Thrones and Westworld on HBO. However, recent events have shown that not to be the case at all. This is partially because some of these notable “original franchises” were, in fact, not actually owned by the service themselves. They were produced by a different company, which then leased exclusively said media to the streaming service for a limited period of time. While these initial deals were often quite long, they have more recently begun expiring. In effect, this means that many once-beloved “original franchises” that have been inexorably linked to given streaming services have now begun getting removed. In some cases, the shows may find themselves on a new home once licensing deals are made. In others, they may be completely inaccessible to the general public. As they never received physical releases, and are not hosted on any current platforms, it leaves potential viewers with no recourse. They can then only rely on their own memories of the media in question or to “setting sail on the high seas”… and taking all of the associated risks involved.
But the disappearance of such media from these platforms goes far deeper than the mere expiring of decades-old contracts. In fact, one of the more popular reasons for the disappearance of media of all forms from streaming platforms comes down to cost-cutting measures and the inherent expense of hosting said media. Many of these platforms – having access to the back-end data showing how many individuals are watching these shows and movies, and with what frequency – can often find the determination that the money they are spending in hosting this particular work of art no longer matches or exceeds what they’re bringing in. So, in order to preserve their bottom line, this media is removed from the service. Sometimes this is even done not as a result of popularity but rather as an attempt to save paying residuals to the writers, directors, and actors involved – itself an even more specious argument and certainly one laced with an even greater moral quandary.
The final and perhaps the most egregious type of media disappearance is that which involves smothering a piece of art before it even gets a chance to exist publicly. Notable examples of this include the cancellation of the Batgirl film (already almost completed) as well as full seasons of certain animated shows by Warner Bros. and HBO. While the stated public reason for such cancellations involved “maintaining certain levels of quality across the brand,” the not-so-secret reason was the attempt of the new parent company to pay down the debt of its latest acquisition. While it would be easy to get bogged down in the details of these examples, the true takeaway here involves the fact that certain pieces of audio-visual art, many of which were fully completed, have been completely erased from history by these media companies before the public ever even had a chance to see them. They were effectively murdered in the cradle – given no chance to be appreciated or evaluated by anyone outside of their creative or financial team.
And while any example of such lost media would be a shame, the sad truth is that all of these examples are not only increasing in frequency but are spreading across the industry as a whole. Again, there might well be many valid and understandable financial reasons for this practice (not least of which likely revolves around the growing-at-any-cost business model that the streaming industry adopted during the “gold rush era” of the early 2020), the ultimate effect is the same: works of art that people love, and even those that have never been seen before, are being effectively erased from our cultural zeitgeist and experience. Locked away forever from current and future generations, never to be discussed, enjoyed, or evaluated.
Conclusion
So, while such lost media might share a cursory resemblance to what has occurred within the video game industry, the reasons and intentions for the loss of this media are quite different. Rather than being hindered by the complexity of hardware and the difficulty of translation, these media are lost for far less practical considerations. (Not that financial interests aren’t practical, necessarily.)
The real question is how society and artists reckon with this new world order. Does the public push back against the continual erasure of their cultural audiovisual heritage… or do they remain silent and let media continue to disappear, only speaking up when it directly affects something they love? How do artists ensure that their work will not only remain to be enjoyed in future years but, in fact, make sure it is even released at all? After all, while they might have created the show or movie in question, in the current system, they rarely own the necessary rights to make it available of their own volition.
While it is true that every artist takes the risk in creating their artwork that it might not be commercially or critically beloved, they have in the past always been able to at least rest assured that it would be given some chance at doing so. The modern system is now managing to strip away even those most basic of expectations. While professionals once felt that having gone through the process of actually filming and editing a piece of art was enough to guarantee its release, they now find themselves facing the stark reality that even after so much time and love has gone into something, it still might be lost to the sands of time. Only given a brief window of exhibition, if any at all.
This is bad not only for the artist themselves, but it is also a critical blow to our culture as a whole. Artwork is meant to touch us both emotionally and intellectually. It is a representation of not only the artist but of the culture in which it was created. A time capsule of thoughts and values and the world as a whole. In the modern era, we have been blessed with excess in terms of our cultural ability to perennially connect with the past via the expectation of continual availability.
That said, the landscape that created such blessings is now turning to sand under our very feet. Artists and fans are watching things they love disappear before our very eyes, unable to be interacted with in any form. As such, it falls on us in this moment to begin making decisions and voicing our opinions on such matters if we wish to change or affect them. If not, we may find ourselves sliding backwards into the abyss and losing the access to media that we have become accustomed to – thus, separating us not only from the artist and the artwork but from our own cultural heritage.
It is not hyperbole to say that artwork is the very lifeblood of humanity, just as much as our scientific and cultural endeavors are. It is a uniquely human exercise that allows us to connect in ways impossible otherwise. To connect as individuals, to connect as cultures, to connect as societies, and to connect as a people through time itself. Allowing the short-term financial whims of uncaring companies the ability to effectively erase shared cultural milestones is a terrifying thought. Not just for the artist, but for all of us.
This is because art is created to be experienced – be that by one person or billions. By restricting or removing its ability to do so, we are effectively robbing it – and ourselves – of its very essence. And, as humanity is so inexorably linked to itself through its artistic creations, we are effectively robbing ourselves of our own essence.
So, if you take nothing else from this particular discussion, remember this:
Art matters.
Access to art matters.
Not just for us in the current moment, but for future generations.
As a result, the preservation of artwork is not some passing fancy, but a duty we have to ourselves and our culture going forward.
The cost of failure is too high.