Out of Line? Archiv­ing In­ter­net Art Off-Line

Symposium:


Session Title:

  • New Media Archives- New Intelligent Ambiances

Presentation Title:

  • Out of Line? Archiv­ing In­ter­net Art Off-Line

Presenter(s):



Venue(s):



Abstract:

  • Panel: New Media Archives- New Intelligent Ambiances

    The Rose Gold­sen Archive of New Media Art, in the Cor­nell Uni­ver­sity Li­brary, has en­gaged in an ag­gres­sive pro­gram of pro­duc­ing and archiv­ing in­ter­net art.   In my pre­sen­ta­tion, I will re­hearse chal­lenges faced by the Archive in pro­duc­ing the in­ter­net art jour­nal, CTHE­ORY Mul­ti­me­dia, which pub­lished fin­ished pieces of in­ter­net art, often re­quir­ing the freez­ing on open data sets for the pur­poses of pub­lish­ing and archiv­ing.  Com­pro­mises made in the pro­duc­tion of in­ter­net art, for the sake of pro­vid­ing data sets that would be equally avail­able to var­i­ous browsers helped to shape the archivist’s cu­ra­to­r­ial phi­los­o­phy in archiv­ing both CTHE­ORY Mul­ti­me­dia and other large repos­i­tory’s of in­ter­net art, par­tic­u­larly Computerfinearts.?com and Turbulence.?org.  To be dis­cussed with the pros and cons of the cu­ra­to­r­ial de­ci­sion to archive large sets of in­ter­net art off-line, pro­vid­ing a sta­ble backup and onset data set for oth­er­wise eco­nom­i­cally un­sta­ble hosts of in­ter­net art.   In con­sid­er­ing whether off-line archiv­ing is ar­tis­ti­cally “out of line,” I will cite the prece­dent of an off-line net art ex­hi­bi­tion that I cu­rated with Teo Spiller in Slove­nia, INFOS 2000, in which we cir­cu­lated in­ter­net art on CD-Rom to users and in­de­pen­dent media cen­ters whose eco­nomic po­si­tion pre­cluded ac­cess to high band­with in­ter­net ser­vice.  In this case the cu­ra­to­r­ial de­ci­sion was a po­lit­i­cal one, more flex­i­ble plat­forms for greater ac­cess.   How does these artis­tic and po­lit­i­cal par­a­digms shift in the case of on­site cu­rat­ing and preser­va­tion of large col­lec­tions of in­ter­net art?


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