Software Diagnostics and Observability Institute

Artistic evidence and the examination of change

PDF: https://www.dumpanalysis.org/files/History_of_Diagnostics_Observability_...

Arts preserve evidence of their making and subsequent change. A painting can contain an earlier composition beneath its visible surface. A performance recording can reveal a discrepancy whose explanation requires a score, a prompt book, or knowledge of the recording process. Such artifacts become diagnostic when we examine their relationships and the conditions under which they were produced.

In History of Diagnostics, Observability, and Debugging in Arts, we follow selected developments from workshop recipes and connoisseurship to conservation laboratories, technical imaging, and digital preservation. We examine examples from painting, sculpture, architecture, literature, music, theater, dance, photography, film, and electronic art. The recurring problem is how to distinguish damage or failure from revision, interpretation, and intended variation.

We connect these histories to our pattern-oriented software diagnostics through Message Context, Adjoint Thread of Activity, Inter-Correlation, and other analysis patterns. These connections help us follow an object across records and investigate discrepancies between different observations. Debugging becomes literal in software-based artworks, where intact files and successful execution may still be insufficient to preserve the intended behavior.

Seven parts and 35 chapters are supported by 80 references, a selected chronology, a glossary, and an evidence taxonomy. Throughout the book, we consider what an observation allows us to conclude, what remains unavailable, and how the record of an investigation can support future diagnosis.