TEDx Bucharest

Alex May gave a TEDx Bucharest talk on 2 April 2015 about the long-term survival of digital art. Starting from the contrast between the endurance of works such as the Mona Lisa and the fragility of contemporary digital systems, the talk asked what it means to preserve art that depends on code, software, hardware, file formats, and technical environments that may quickly become obsolete.

The argument matters because May’s work is grounded in digital processes rather than using technology as a neutral delivery mechanism. If a work depends on specific software, a particular language, or a now-unsupported platform, then preservation is not just a question of storing files. It becomes a question of whether the underlying logic, behaviour, and experience of the work can still be reached in the future.

Within the wider practice, the talk is a clear expression of May’s long-running interest in memory, loss, and the instability of digital culture. It frames preservation as both a technical and artistic problem, asking how works made with code can persist across decades or centuries without being reduced to incomplete records of something that can no longer run.