rvmc alpha Research VM Controller
ZKM | Zentrum für Kunst und Medien Karlsruhe

Chapter 3 · 3 of 9

Separating the artwork from the machinery

The whole approach rests on one move: treat the artwork and its environment as an immutable object, and put everything that changes around it.

A virtual machine — a complete computer running as software on a host — lets a vanished environment live on, and lets it be copied, frozen, inspected, and shared. A snapshot that captures both memory and disk preserves not a pile of installation files but the verified working state of the browser, the plugin, the artwork, and the operating system together.

The conservation model organises that into three layers.

Host Control & adaptation — Layer 2 (changeable) State monitor Decision logic Snapshot control API mediation activates activates VM environment — Layer 1 (immutable object) Artwork (code + assets) Legacy OS Legacy runtimes & plugins Defined execution state (snapshot) heartbeat · alive / idle revert request / mediated response External services — Layer 3 (live internet, via the host) modified request / contemporary reply
Figure 2. The three-layer architecture. State is detected inside the VM; every decision and intervention happens outside it. Adapted from the IEEE Computer paper.
Layer 1 — immutable conservation object Layer 2 — host controller (changeable) Layer 3 — external services

Layer 1 — the immutable conservation object

The historical operating system, browser, plugins, and artwork, captured as a tested snapshot. This is the thing being preserved, and it is never modified after setup. All change happens around it.

Layer 2 — the host controller

Everything changeable: a monitor that watches whether the work is alive, logic that decides what to do, snapshot control that can restore the object, and API mediation that stands in for or brokers the services the work expects. When the outside world changes, only this layer is touched.

Layer 3 — external services

Where a work genuinely needs the live internet, it reaches it only through the host — where requests can be rewritten, recorded, cached, replayed from an archive, or answered by a stand-in when the original server is long dead.

Why the separation matters

Preserving a work no longer means freezing the entire internet around it — only encapsulating its runtime and providing adaptable interfaces to the outside. And because a tested snapshot plus its host services captures a working configuration, it travels: one restored work from Choose Your Filter! was redeployed at Rhizome World in New York simply by copying the system to another machine — no re-restoration, run by staff who had never touched the original.