vmctl alpha Keeping born-digital art alive
ZKM | Zentrum für Kunst und Medien Karlsruhe

A ZKM open-source project

Understand, revive, and exhibit born-digital artworks

Many artworks made with computers — CD-ROMs, net art, software installations — can no longer be shown, because the computers, browsers, and servers they were made for are gone. vmctl is a set of free, open tools from ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe that helps museums and researchers work out what such an artwork needs, get it running again on a faithful recreation of its original machine, and keep it running through the months of an exhibition — without anyone standing next to it.

Meet the three tools Where this came from
Three panels side by side: an analysis report summarising a work's identity and behaviour, the flow-graph viewer showing the work's files and network connections as wired boxes, and the restored work running fullscreen inside its period Windows XP machine.
A work’s path through the tools: what it is, what it reaches for, and running again.
unknown work a folder, a disc, a drive Analyse what is it, what does it need Revive run it on its period machine Exhibit months unattended in a gallery
One artwork, three stages: each stage hands a verified result to the next.

Analyse

artwork-autopsy · published alpha

Hand it an unknown bundle and it reads the work end to end: what it is, where it begins, what machine it needs, and every server it quietly calls.

For conservators triaging a work they’ve never seen run.

An analysis report scrolled to its verdict: identity, what the work does, and how it behaves, with file paths and network endpoints listed as evidence.
Open autopsy.vmctl.org →

Revive

Research VM Controller · alpha

Build the era-correct machine in your browser, run the work, watch what it reaches for, try things and roll them back — then write the revival down as a shareable recipe.

For researchers and conservators doing the actual revival.

The Research VM Controller workbench: a project page with the intake pipeline — identity, the original bundle, analysis, base VM, helpers — laid out as steps.
Open research.vmctl.org →

Exhibit

Exhibition VM Controller · published

Show a work that’s understood: a virtual machine — a software copy of the work’s original computer — that runs unattended for the months a show is open and puts itself back into a known-good state within seconds of any crash.

For curators and gallery technicians keeping a show running.

A period computer workstation installed in a darkened gallery: monitor, speakers, and desk lamp on a desk, lit only by the screen.
Photo: Joe Miletzki
Open exhibition.vmctl.org →

Open source, because a conservation record you can’t inspect is not a record

A museum that conserves cultural heritage with closed tools takes on a second preservation risk: the tool itself. If no one can see what an analysis did, what a revival changed, or how a machine was rebuilt, the conservation record ends where the vendor’s software begins — and dies with it. Every part of vmctl is MIT-licensed and public: the analysis, the workbench, the exhibition controller, and the recipes that carry a revival between them. Nothing proprietary stands between you and the artwork — reports are plain web pages, machines are standard virtual-machine files any emulator can open.

Cite this software Citation entry (BibTeX / CFF) and DOI badge land here with the first tagged release.

Contribute — a work first, code last

The most valuable contribution is not a pull request. It is a work: an artwork slipping away, a collection nobody can run anymore, period-software knowledge that lives only in your head. There are three ways in — contribute a work, contribute knowledge, contribute code.

How to contribute

Lab Notes

All Lab Notes →