So many types of change

It's taken us a while but I and my time-based art colleague Asti Sherring have finally got our ideas together about changeable objects - the ones that can be artworks or big machines (or many other things), but they all share the quality that they don't really exist, or don't come properly alive until they move, or work. This creates all sorts of dilemmas for traditional views of heritage and conservation, which treat change as a negative thing, as damage, as a degradation of authenticity. We see it the opposite way - if the opportunity to experience these things working is lost, if the opportunity to learn how to make them work is lost, that is just as much a loss of authenticity as if you change out one of their physical parts.

In fact we got so interested in this we decided there were three types of change that these objects experience while being themselves:

Changeability: change that is part of the the object's normal way of working (like video images, or metal that heats up on a steam engine)

Variability: changes made by people to repair the object, or adapt it to a new display space, or replace obsolete or unsafe parts

Malleability: changes caused by interaction with the outside world, like the wind, or people using it, or it being allowed to decay

See more at https://doi.org/10.1080/00393630.2020.1860672