Data archiving for art??

How artists and art orgs etc archive their data?

I have seen a post or posts about this subject recently on new-media curation, nettime and probably netbehaviour as well..

Something kind of felt un-easy about this subject and probably felt sort of melancholic joy being unable to point at wtf is that feeling..

Then I bumped today into BioLinux, a distro with lots of apps and arrangements to do bioinfo stuff easy. I noticed that some of the tools are actually for arranging data so it can be UseD in various ways..
(..am emphasising UseD because my interest is in data Being, rather than usage, however, the manipulation via X/certain intent, is very interesting for me..)

Indeed, it does feel a bit strange that given the nature/being of data different to paint-data, stone, or even manuscript data, that the treatment of it – in terms of art – is as if the data is an object akin to a rock, metal, etc..

My thinking(??) – perhaps more instinct – is that to begin with, maybe the if a + b is also in and of itself a data structure.. Or rather than a data sequence that is also, by its very nature, structure.. (I don’t feel comfortable with structures..)
A data arrangement that lives with the strand..
In that sense, maybe some art data arrangements is: if a + b (eg a collage??), and maybe others can be, for example, if a – b (e.g. a chiseled statue..)???