Choose Your Filter!
Restoration of browser artworks from the 1990s–2020s. Many works considered permanently lost are now functional.
Role: Media art conservation and technical development
About the Project
Choose Your Filter! is a restoration project for browser-based artworks from three decades, from the 1990s to the 2020s. Many of these works were considered permanently lost because they depended on obsolete plugins, defunct servers and outdated web technologies. The exhibition ran from February 1 to August 24, 2025 at ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe. Among the restored works, Eden.Garden by Entropy8Zuper! (Auriea Harvey & Michaël Samyn) was selected for presentation at Rhizome World in New York City.
Technical Challenges
- Plugin emulation: restoring Flash, Java Applet, and Shockwave content in modern browsers
- Server reconstruction: rebuilding backend services required by server-side artworks
- Browser compatibility: ensuring functionality in current browsers while preserving the original experience
- Historical browser environments: recreating the rendering contexts of Internet Explorer 4/8 and other obsolete browsers
Collaboration
The project was developed from two KIT (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology) research projects on internet art, with curators Inge Hinterwaldner and Daniela Hönigsberg (KIT) and Laura C. Schmidt (ZKM). Credit: “Media art conservators and technical development: Daniel Heiss, Marc Schütze, Matthieu Vlaminck.”