Preserving, Restoring, and Passing Down Video-Game Music from the Past: The Case of Directmusic

Video-game music is a form of art that is gaining increasing interest, not only in the technological field but also in musicological research and in the area of Digital Humanities. Characterized by vanishing technological support and by the discontinuing of the software and hardware once used for its reproduction, the establishment of archives and standards that allow the fruition of such artifacts become of crucial importance. The goal of this project is to preserve, restore and pass down video-game music currently available only in an obsolete format. Our main case study will revolve around Microsoft DirectMusic technology, adopted in the 90s for composing music for video games and later discontinued. This work can be seen as a first effort at a larger goal that includes a discussion related to the philological process of what needs to be preserved and how, and the creation of accessible archives.