This document discusses a project called "The Digital City Revives!" which aims to reconstruct, preserve, and provide access to born-digital heritage from a website called "The Digital City" or "De Digitale Stad" (DDS) in a sustainable way. DDS was the first public virtual city and online community in the Netherlands from 1996. The project explores doing this through web archaeology techniques like emulation and recreating the site using modern software. It also discusses presenting reconstructions of DDS in museum contexts through mobile installations, web documentaries, and interactive exhibits. The goal is to showcase how digital heritage can be preserved and made accessible to prevent it from being lost to history.

2. MuseumNext, 27 June 2017, Rotterdam
Lizzy Komen, Project Manager Research & Development
Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision
The Digital City
Presenting webarcheology
in a museum context

4. Help! Our digital heritage is getting lost!
"The world’s digital heritage is at risk of being lost” and
"It’s preservation is an urgent issue of worldwide
concern”, UNESCO in ‘Charter on the preservation of the
digital heritage’ (2003).
"The Web was not designed to be preserved. The
average life of a Web page is about 100 days“, Brewster
Kahle, Internet Archive.
“Humanity’s first steps into the digital world could be lost
to future historians. We face a "forgotten generation, or
even a forgotten century”, Vint Cerf, Google

5. Project 'The Digital City Revives!'
QUESTION: HOW DO YOU RECONSTRUCT, PRESERVE AND MAKE ACCESSIBLE BORN-DIGITAL
HERITAGE IN A SUSTAINABLE WAY?

6. What was The Digital City (De Digitale Stad)?
1st (free) public domain virtual city in the world, 1st Dutch online community, 1st time
internet (freely) accessible to general public in the Netherlands.
→ Freeze: 1996

7. Why this project?
Material: rapid obsolescence of
technology: missing hardware and
software, lost documents and link rot
Method: difference between web
archiving and web archaeology. Web
archiving is the equivalent of taking a
photographic snapshot of an object,
while we first aim to recreate the
digital object itself. And then:
dynamic web archiving!

8. Where it all started..
1. Start
Launch of Open History Lab: re:DDS.nl
2. Digg
Organise Grave Diggers Party.
Crowdsourcing in Open History Lab
3. Reconstruction
Analyse & Make data accessible
Develop webarcheology tools
Reconstruct DDS: replica & emulation
4. Delivery for collections and presentations
Archiving DDS
Let the bytes free: making DDS accessible
5. Finish project
Conclusions, evaluation, documentation, knowledge sharing

9. The Digital City unlocked!
2 variants DDS3.0:
Emulation:
Original code on new machines
Starting point: restoring the original software
Replica:
Old data into new software
Starting points: restore the user experience,
recreate historical objects & present it without
privacy and security issues

10. Preservation scenarios
1. Bit preservation 2. Dynamic storage 3. Access
2017: DIY HANDBOOK! (NL)

11. Feasibility study for presenting The Digital City in
a museum context
1. Technical
2. Artistic/abstract
3. Contextual
Workshops to determine target users,
design and mock-up sessions
Hacking Heritage Lab (June 2017)
2019: 25th anniversary DDS

12. The collection
https://hart.amsterdam/nl/page/33435/historisch-depot-re-dds
https://hart.amsterdam/whois
Objects
Born-digital objects
Stories and people!

13. The Digital City at Amsterdam Museum

14. The Digital City at Sound and Vision

15. Examples of presentation forms

16. Games - Let's Play

17. Screensavers
Sleep Mode. The Art of the Screensaver, Rafaël Rozendaal, Het Nieuwe Instituut
Photo: Johannes Schwartz

18. Web
64 Bits: An Exhibition of the Web’s Lost Past, London

19. The Deleted City
The Deleted City, Richard Vijgen - http://deletedcity.net/

20. Presentation of DDS in museum
context
4 scenario’s

21. MOBILE INSTALLATION

23. WEB DOCUMENTARY

25. INTERACTIVE PRESENTATION IN
MUSEUM v.1

29. INTERACTIVE PRESENTATION IN
MUSEUM v.2

31. Thank you!
lkomen@beeldengeluid.nl
@lizzykomen
@benglabs
labs.beeldengeluid.nl
www.beeldengeluid.nl
Re:DDS:
https://hart.amsterdam.nl/re-dds
#DeDigitaleStad #DDS #webarchaeology
Sketches by Dick van Dijk @Waag Society
With slides from Tjarda de Haan @Amsterdam Museum