Silicon Graphics digital art @ ZKM

What is the ZKM?

When a Renaissance masterpiece requires restoration, simple paints and brushes can suffice. The key lies in human skill.

However, what happens when a digital art piece, relying on outdated technology and obsolete codes, malfunctions?

The ZKM, Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe, Germany, is striving to provide a solution.

The ZKM boasts the world’s largest collection of digital art, comprising over 10.000 pieces. Additionally, it serves as the global hub for digital art conservation.

How are Silicon Graphics workstations related to digital art?

Especially in the 90s Silicon Graphics workstations have been use to produce digital art and so they became a integral part other than the artworks themselves.

From Silicon Graphics O2, Indigo 2 up to very expensive Onyx Infinite Reality systems have been used by artists around the world to create their masterpieces.

What happens with this artwork today?

Many artworks have been ported form IRIX to Linux, for example The Legible City.

However for many pieces it is very difficult to port them, especially if custom hardware is involved or the source code of the original installation is no longer available.

This is the art work Remote Control from 1999 on display in the ZKM in 2025 featuring a Silicon Graphics O2.

The description of the piece on the wall reads: In this exhibition Remote Control will probably run on the original hardware for the very last time.

Preservation of such kind of installations is an important but not simple tasks. In the meantime the Silicon Graphics workstations are becoming pieces of artwork themselves and are on display in the museum, too.

The title of the most recent exhibition is a great positive statement to end this post: "The story never ends".