Resumen
How are we to tackle digital heritage? The fact that its code can be copied, combined with a strong reliance on user interaction, is a distinguishing characteristic of digital art, one which also complicates framing it with the traditional categories of art history. Therefore, in my search for the new ways to preserve heritage, appropriate for digital objects, I will use a case study where technical and social elements play an important role and where we can already speak of a partly institutionalized network aimed at preservation, even if its identification within the field of art, or heritage, is not exactly obvious. I propose an analysis based on the research of the Polish community of pinball machine collectors. My case study will also address the question of the category of locality with regard to projects featuring seemingly universal digital elements. Reflecting on the strategies that the pinball community uses to preserve its artifacts and to animate social activity centered upon those artifacts, can help facilitate modeling at least some practices needed to preserve digital art, practices more inclusive than the traditional approaches, and uniting, even if imperfectly, rather than dividing various social groups.