[-empyre-] playing for preservation

[Tim Plaisted <tim@boxc.net>]

Aside from reading empyre, I've spent the past week playing Zelda, a 
rerelease of an influential game (/text) from '98 emulated on GameCube 
but originally for N64. I bought it 3 months back but its only playable 
now that I have a new TV to support the emulated 60Hz refresh rate. 
more specifically to this week's topic.. I've seen this addressed by 
institutions, relating to new media, as a discussion of preservation 
vs. emulation: as technology that supports much work goes through an 
arc of cutting edge expense to redundant bargain to return to expense 
through scarcity and lack of knowledge for maintenance. The project 
then is to emulate an environment to display the work and the "to 
archive" question would be relevant on a per work basis from this point 
of view.

I'm going to address new forms rather than migration+protection of 
older sources. In my own work, i've gone the way of pushing into the 
edges of accessible technology where I can instead of relying on big 
specialised tech (read redundant: brand new, you're retro..) and having 
the installation scale to the institution and.. with Surface Browser @ 
acmi+nesta, letting the audience install it themselves. Surface Browser 
is an installable piece of software. distribution was thought about 
from the start about being cross platform cause it was first done for 
an online gallery. it was pretty tough to install tho.. hopefully 
pretty easy now. version control of the environment is inherent in the 
installation. not future proof, but it is negotiated by the software 
itself.. something that is addressed by some net distributed work.

One thing about generative works tho is their source material: food.. 
how important is viewing seed content of the time of a piece through 
the piece? (like the reverse question of how important is it to play 
old music with old instruments...) generative net art then benefits 
from projects like Pandora caching periods of the net's emerging 
history.

Tim Plaisted

( Zelda ref: http://www.gamespot.com/n64/adventure/legendofzeldaoot/  ) 
 + Surface Browser ref: http://www.boxc.net/surfacebrowser.html