About Onchain Art (Part 1): The Fragility of Cultural Memory

Digital technology has often been hailed as the antidote to cultural amnesia. In the realm of art, the advent of NFTs and especially onchain art came with a promise of eternal preservation. If every image, piece of code, or creative artifact can be copied infinitely and recorded immutably, it would seem that the digital era guarantees perfect memory for culture. However, a deeper look through the lens of Jan and Aleida Assmann’s theories of memory suggests a more fragile reality. [Note: Let’s get the obvious out of the way. English readers often smile at the spelling of the German surname “Assmann” (pronounced AHS-MAHN). Their theory is one of the most influential in contemporary memory studies. Now that this has been clarified, we can turn our attention to the work itself.]

The two scholars distinguish between communicative memory (the living, everyday memory of communities) and cultural memory (the institutionalised memory preserved across generations), and their findings show why technology alone cannot ensure cultural survival. This text explores how cultural memory theory illuminates the challenges faced by digital art - and onchain art in particular. We will see that while data may endure on blockchains, true cultural memory demands active ritual, reinterpretation, and transmission across time. In other words, technological storage is not enough; without human engagement and context, even “permanent” digital art can fade into oblivion.

Cultural Memory vs Communicative Memory

Jan Assmann’s foundational work on memory outlines two distinct yet complementary forms by which societies remember the past. In brief:

• Communicative memory refers to the informal, everyday memory circulating within a living community. It is the realm of personal recollections and oral histories shared among those who experienced events directly or heard about them from recent predecessors. Communicative memory is transient and short-term, spanning roughly 3-4 generations (around 80-100 years)​. It requires no specialized knowledge - everyone participates in keeping recent memories alive through conversation and direct storytelling. But it fades as those who hold the memories pass away.
• Cultural memory, by contrast, is the long-duration memory of a society, institutionalized and “objectified” in lasting symbols, texts, and traditions. It consists of objectified and institutionalized memories, that can be stored, transferred and reincorporated throughout generations. Cultural memory is embodied in durable cultural carriers - texts, rites, monuments, celebrations, objects, sacred scriptures and other media that serve as mnemonic triggers for shared meaning​. Because it is recorded in such external supports, cultural memory can endure for centuries or millennia, far beyond the living reach of communicative memory. It often preserves foundational myths and collective experiences of the distant past. However, cultural memory typically requires a framework of interpretation (often maintained by specialists or cultural institutions) to unlock the meanings of these inherited symbols. In other words, cultural memory lives in archives, artworks, rituals, and monuments that outlast their creators.

The Assmanns emphasize that these two forms of memory work together. Communicative memory connects directly with lived experience but is ephemeral; cultural memory provides continuity and depth but must be actively maintained and reinterpreted to stay relevant. Jan Assmann notes that cultural memory relates its knowledge to an actual and contemporary situation - it must be continually re-framed by the present, or else it risks becoming inert. Aleida Assmann builds on this by distinguishing between functional memory - the actively used, meaning-giving part of cultural memory (a society’s “canon” of salient texts, images, and rituals) - and storage memory - the vast backlog of archived data or artifacts that are preserved but not actively circulated​. The contents of storage memory are often disjointed and unstructured until they are processed and integrated into the living cultural narrative​. In her view, cultural memory requires continuous curation: selecting, interpreting, and ritually reactivating elements from the archive so that they become part of a shared heritage rather than forgotten relics.

This theoretical framework is insightful when applied to digital art. At first glance, one might think that digital technology collapses the distinction between communicative and cultural memory: after all, anything online can be copied, shared, and stored indefinitely, blending everyday communication with permanent archive. Yet, as we shall see, the promise of perfect digital memory runs up against both technical and cultural limits. The Assmanns' insight that memory is more than just storage - that it relies on active embedding in social contexts - is crucial to understanding why even onchain art is vulnerable to loss of meaning.

The Digital Promise of Perfect Memory

From an optimistic perspective, digital art emerged as a medium where memory loss seemed like a solved problem. Unlike a fresco that can fade or a canvas that can burn, a digital file can be duplicated endlessly without degradation. The Internet made it possible to distribute countless copies of an artwork across the world, greatly reducing the risk that any single point of failure (a fire, a flood, an accident) could wipe out the work entirely. More recently, blockchain technology has taken this promise a step further. Blockchain-based art platforms often tout immutability and permanence as defining features: once an artwork’s data is written “onchain,” it is secured by a decentralized network of computers, theoretically forever. For instance, a prominent platform for generative art proudly proclaims that fully onchain works “can be generated forever with just a web browser and access to the blockchain,” unlike traditional digital files that might be lost to time or technical change​. The rhetoric of Web3 enthusiasts frequently invokes immutable, decentralized and permanent storage as inherent advantages of blockchain-based cultural content. In essence, digital art - and especially onchain art - appears to offer what earlier ages of culture could only dream of: an incorruptible, perfectly preserved memory of the artwork, accessible to all future generations.

On the surface, this vision aligns with the idea of cultural memory. By encoding art into durable digital form and widely distributing it, we create an eternal archive - a kind of global museum that time cannot easily erode. Unlike communicative memory, which dies with its bearers, digital records in theory need never die at all. A piece of onchain art is stored in thousands of nodes; it doesn’t rely on any single caretaker or physical object. Technologically, it seems to fulfill the criteria of cultural memory: objectified, exteriorized, stable across contexts. Redundancy replaces ritual - if every node on the blockchain holds a copy, the art doesn’t require human remembrance to persist, or so it would seem. Many in the crypto art world have thus equated storage with preservation, assuming that if the bits survive, the cultural memory of the art is secure.

However, this optimistic narrative overlooks the crucial difference between having data exist and having data mean something within a cultural framework. The fragility of cultural memory lies not only in the risk of physical loss, but in the risk of disconnection from context and relevance. We have to understand that memory needs humans and interpretative frameworks to stay alive. To better understand this, we need to examine how digital environments actually evolve over time - which is often in unpredictable ways that challenge the notion of ‘permanent’ memory.

The Reality of Decay and Mutation

Digital technology, paradoxically, is both robust in preserving exact information and fragile in terms of long-term accessibility and context. While an oil painting might physically deteriorate, a digital artwork faces a different kind of decay: formats become obsolete, software is discontinued, links rot, and the hardware or platforms needed to experience the art may vanish or transform beyond recognition. In other words, the environment required to interpret or render the digital file is in constant flux. Technological storage alone cannot guarantee that future users will be able to access the content as intended.

Consider a simple example: an interactive artwork created in 2025 using a popular JavaScript library like p5.js. Even if the code of that artwork is stored immutably on a blockchain, there is no certainty that in, say, 2040, web browsers will still support that library or the underlying programming languages. It does not matter whether the work is onchain, even if the documentation is stored - if the environment (browser, operating system or hardware) no longer supports this code, the artwork is no longer accessible without intervention. Artists, curators and collectors may need to consider how this code can be migrated to a format that does not even exist yet so that the work can be experienced as it was intended. If the underlying infrastructure of today’s computers and networks changes radically, any “permanent” digital repository must also adapt or risk becoming unreadable. In short, digital artworks can suffer a kind of bit rot of relevance - not that the files vanish, but that they become functionally illegible.

Beyond technical obsolescence, there is also the issue of shifting cultural context. An artwork is more than its raw data; it is also the knowledge of how to interpret that data. Imagine a piece of onchain art stored with perfect fidelity, but 200 years in the future, no one remembers or has records of the conceptual framework or community norms that gave it meaning. The data might be intact, but its significance could be as inscrutable as an ancient script without a Rosetta Stone. Digital culture is changing rapidly; memes that are commonplace today may be incomprehensible in a decade. Similarly, an NFT artwork that sparked intense discourse in 2021 might be met with puzzlement by those in 22nd century unless there has been continuous transmission of its story and context. Meaning can decay even if data does not. This is precisely what Jan Assmann would identify as a breakdown of cultural memory: the symbolic form remains, but the living link of interpretation is severed.

In practical terms, we have already witnessed how fragile digital platforms can be. Entire networks and archives have disappeared or changed - from the loss of MySpace's huge music collection due to a server error to the abandonment of Flash animations, which shaped an era of web art and are now no longer accessible with modern browsers. Blockchain-based content is not magically immune to such problems. If, for example, an art platform goes offline or the community abandons it, the data will remain onchain, but who will know how to find it, and who will be interested in it? (Hopefully, the parent-child concept in the Ordinals space offers a potential solution here, where you can link related works under an ancestor, i.e. the initial inscription of a platform, artist, creator, etc.). Possession of data is not the same as preservation of art. A blockchain entry might tell you that a certain ID corresponds to an artwork, but without the software to decode it or the cultural memory to contextualize it, the token alone means very little.

All of these challenges underscore Aleida Assmann’s point about storage memory versus functional memory. The internet and blockchains have given us massive storage memory for culture - an ever-growing archive of bits. But that archive will only yield cultural value if we continually invest effort to bring parts of it into functional memory, weaving it into the narratives and knowledge of living communities. This brings us to the role of human practice: the rituals and reinterpretations needed to truly preserve art over time.

Ritual, Reinterpretation, and the Maintenance of Memory

So what, truly secures an artwork’s place in cultural memory? The Assmanns would answer: ritual, repetition, and reinterpretation. Throughout history, societies have preserved their core cultural memories through ceremonies, storytelling, and education - essentially, by continuously re-engaging with the symbols of the past. The ancient epics were recited aloud in each generation; religious communities reenact and retell foundational events in rituals; museums exhibit and scholars re-analyze works of art, keeping them in the public eye. This active renewal is the heartbeat of cultural memory. Without it, even the most exquisite monument can turn into an unreadable ruin over time.

In Assmann’s terms, cultural memory requires “cultivation” and the participation of a community that upholds certain “obligatory” remembrances​. If one wishes to belong to that culture, one is expected to know and care about those memories. The digital art world, particularly the Web3 subculture, has indeed begun to develop its own rituals and norms to maintain memory. For example, NFT owners often commemorate the anniversaries of notable projects, retell the origin stories of famed pieces, and create derivative works or memes that keep the original alive in collective consciousness. These practices mirror the way “memorial figures” (Erinnerungsfiguren) in traditional cultures - be they mythic heroes, canonical texts, or iconic images - are continually evoked so that their meaning is not lost. A notable NFT or onchain artwork might achieve the status of a cultural touchstone within the crypto community if it is frequently referenced and celebrated, thus transferring it from mere data onchain to a living memory in the community’s identity.

However, the challenge is ensuring these rituals persist beyond the initial enthusiastic community. Aleida Assmann speaks of cultures creating a “contract between the living, the dead, and the not yet living”​. This poetic formulation underscores that memory is a pact across generations - today’s custodians owe it to both their predecessors and successors to carry forward the meanings of cultural treasures. Applying this to onchain art: the creators and collectors of today have a responsibility to document and transmit the significance of their art to those who will come later. This could take the form of writing detailed histories, establishing trusts or integrating onchain art into educational curricula. Without such conscious efforts, we effectively break the contract - we leave the “not yet living” (the future generations) a chest of cultural assets but without the keys to unlock their meaning.

It’s also worth noting that reinterpretation is not just a burden, but an opportunity. New generations will find new angles of significance in today’s digital art, just as contemporary scholars find fresh interpretations of Renaissance paintings or ancient sculptures. But that can only happen if the artworks remain visible and intelligible enough to invite reinterpretation. Thus, the rituals of digital memory might include technical migration, as well as discursive reinterpretation (writing new critical commentary, drawing parallels to new cultural circumstances, etc.). In a way, one might think of software updates and protocol forks as a kind of ritual in the tech realm - recurring activities that keep a system viable. Similarly, we might envision periodic “renewal ceremonies” for onchain art, where communities come together to ensure an old contract still runs, the artwork still displays correctly, and its story is retold with contemporary insight. Through such rituals, the art remains part of a living tradition rather than a static artifact.

When Technological Storage ≠ Cultural Survival

The central lesson that emerges from this reflection is a cautionary one: do not confuse technological permanence with cultural permanence. The myth that encoding something in digital form guarantees its survival is as precarious as earlier myths that printing something in a book guaranteed people would read it forever. Survival in a cultural sense means being remembered and understood, not just existing as inscribed data. Memory is a process, not just a storage state. It involves community, identity, and continuous re-engagement. When we assume that a blockchain or any future tech will do the remembering for us, we risk abandoning the very processes that give memory its richness.

As conservators or archivists put it, “storage is not preservation”​. A file locked in a vault is preserved only in the most superficial sense. True preservation would mean that the file can be retrieved, rendered, and contextualized meaningfully in the future - that it continues to be part of an active cultural repertoire. Likewise, an onchain artwork’s token may survive through the ages, but preserving the art entails more: maintaining the ability to experience it and the knowledge to interpret it. This is why major museums and archives developing digital art conservation strategies focus not just on saving bits, but on documenting the intent and context of artworks, and planning for future migrations and reinterpretations. Technology can greatly aid these efforts (for example, distributed storage can protect against physical loss, and blockchains can provide verifiable provenance records), but it cannot replace the human element of preservation. In memory terms, technology can extend the capacity of our storage memory, yet converting stored information into lasting cultural memory demands human-driven action of meaning.

We should also be wary of an implicit danger: the hubris of our presentism. Every era tends to believe its creations will be eternally important, especially if they are safely recorded. But cultural history is full of instances where works were forgotten for centuries and only later rediscovered. Many ancient texts survived by chance in monastic libraries but meant little until scholars revived interest; countless slide photos have literally disintegrated because no one bothered to transfer them in time, thinking copies existed elsewhere. With an ever-increasing flood of content, the mere existence of an artwork in an archive (onchain or off-chain) is no guarantee anyone will sift through and care about it in the future. Cultural survival requires significance, and significance is something that must be cultivated, argued for, and renewed.

In the context of onchain art, this means that creators and communities should plan not just for minting the work, but for its long-term place in culture. It invites questions that go beyond technical specs: How will this piece be experienced in 50 or 100 years? What documentation or tools should we include now to help future people understand it? Is there a way to embed a “story” or “message to the future” alongside the raw data onchain? These are the kinds of questions that bridge the gap between mere storage and genuine cultural memory.

Conclusion

The exploration of onchain art through the concept of cultural memory reveals a poignant truth: cultural memory is fragile, even in the digital era. The blockchain technologies give us unprecedented power to preserve the body of an artwork - its code, its image, its transactional record - but preserving its soul requires ongoing effort by living communities. Communicative memory imbues art with life in its early days through human connection and discourse; if we want that life to continue, we must consciously carry those memories into cultural forms that persist beyond the now. Onchain art shows both the promise and the pitfall of digital memory: on one hand, it offers a radical new medium of permanence; on the other, it tempts us to outsource memory to machines, forgetting that meaning dwells in minds and societies.

In reflecting on digital art’s fate, the Assmanns’ insights encourage a balanced approach. We should certainly leverage technology to safeguard the records of our culture - to avoid needless loss of information. But we must equally invest in the rituals of remembrance: education, curation, re-publication, migration, and celebration. The blockchain might ensure that a piece of art exists in 500 years, but only cultural practice will ensure that it is still alive in 500 years, as something more than just an inscrutable string of bits. Our task, then, is to treat onchain art not as a self-contained time capsule, but as part of a living continuum - to be stewards who not only leave a legacy for the future, but also provide guidance so that it can be found and appreciated. If we fail, we may leave behind perfect digital shells from which the meaning has long since leached away. Here is the reminder: cultural memory is never automatic - it is an ongoing responsibility. And in the rapidly changing landscape of digital art, that responsibility is one we must embrace with both technical ingenuity and cultural care, so that the art of our time remains a living memory and not a lost one.