...
"The Variable Media approach integrates the analysis of materials with the definition of an artwork independently from its medium, allowing the work to be translated once its current medium becomes obsolete. By identifying the work's work’s behaviors (contained, installed, performed, reproduced, etc.) and strategies (storage, emulation, migration, and reinterpretation), artists, conservators, and curators can advance the preservation of new-media art. The idea to describe a work of art, not only as a list of components and materials, but by the way it behaves, is crucial to the Variable Media methodology."
...
- Supports the viability, renderability, understandability, authenticity, and identity of digital objects in a preservation context;
- Represents the information most preservation repositories need to know to preserve digital materials over the long-term;
- Emphasizes "implementable metadata"“implementable metadata”: rigorously defined, supported by guidelines for creation, management, and use, and oriented toward automated workflows; and
- Embodies technical neutrality: no assumptions made about preservation technologies, strategies, metadata storage and management, etc.
...