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Digital Exhibits
Digital exhibits can take on many forms but are often a narrative representation of a curated selection of digital objects. Those objects may be images, videos, data or interactive code (eg. a visualization). The infrastructure required to host and maintain a digital exhibit varies with the complexity of the tools used.
Often digital exhibits are build using “Content Management Systems” (eg. Omeka which is specialised for exhibits or Wordpress which is a general website tool) but sometimes these tools have more features and dependencies than needed. Dependencies are elements that make a tool function and need ongoing maintenance. The more dependencies a tool has the more difficult and costly it can be to maintain.
Additionally more complex tools can present challenges to long-term sustainabiltiy. For instance, if a dependency changes dramatically or ceases to exist, the project may not work into the future and require a lot of work to fix.
Minimal Computing
Minimal computing is a way of thinking about the way we do our work to create things using limited resources (in terms of funding, computing power, and capacity), open and flexible file formats, and fewer dependencies.
It’s important to know that minimal does not mean “simple” necessarily but it does mean more self-contained, less dependant, and easy to export or convert.
What is Wax?
Wax is a tool for the creation of digital exhibits with minimal computing principles. It creates static exhibit sites which are computationally reproducible.