Based on principles of mutual support and care, TRANSFER and our artists built this vision together through generosity and collaboration for over a decade. Artists are taking back control of their data, giving them agency to preserve their cultural legacy without depending on traditional institutions or tech corporations.
Our goal is to explore how interdisciplinary collaboration and cooperative stewardship can enable a sustainable framework for media art preservation.
Bring together the knowledge of conservators and technologists to co-design infrastructure that addresses pain points of existing systems.
Reimagine relationships of stewardship and the funding models for ongoing care of variable media art by creating a peer network for conservation backed by a sustainable cooperative business entity.
Involve artist studios directly in conservation and preservation, by giving them tools to collaborate directly with trained conservators to start the documentation process much earlier in the lifecycle of the artwork.
Ensure cultural infrastructure is free of dependencies on big tech, corporate platforms, and generates minimal technical debt so it can continue to be migrated properly and accessed 100 years into the future.
The Data Co-op governance model is based on collaborations that have unfolded over a decade of experimental artistic production, creating a powerful and proven framework. Our vision is to establish a sustainable model that endures, operating at the scale of trust. We aim to redistribute wealth to our members, and support experimental art practice for the long-run.
CARE TEAM
sasha arden, Eddy Colloton, Taylor Healy, Nick Kaplan, Claudia Roeck
DEVELOPMENT TEAM
Ryan Betts, Andrew Vivash, Mattaniah Aytenfsu
Each year we hold a Virtual Summit to look back on our progress, and vote on how our membership evolves for the coming year.
New members are eligible after years of collaboration and reciprocal care – sorry, we do not accept membership inquiries.
If you are intersted in participating you can request an invitation to join the network and use our model as a template to create a collective entity with others who you trust.