 Developed by Richard Rinehart, Digital Media Director and Adjunct Curator, Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive, MANS is described as a 'formal notation system for media art' that is in keeping with existing preservation frameworks and vocabularies currently being used to document and preserve other forms of art by museums.Using the metaphor of the musical score, as a form of declarative and conceptual notation of music, Rinehart likens Media Art to musical compositions that are able to maintain their original integrity while being realized by different instruments or in different arrangements, over evolving time periods; in this sense, scores are considered to be inherently variable.In Rinehart's view, media art (in which logical information is considered separate from physical hardware) is able to be 'scored' based on the information acquired from a document like the Variable Media Questionnaire to be realized by different media-equipment.