Re: [-empyre-] Preservation

"Melinda Rackham" <melt2@pacific.net.au> · Mon, 28 Jun 2004 12:28:50 +1000

i though one of the major reasons Pandora existed and needs to exist is to
actually focus on preserving aspects of Australian culture  in a world where
internet culture is homogenised to a fit a US model.

but  my concern relates to my own work  and to Clares question about
preservation of original form and functionality?
.. as an online artist ive seen the functionality of the work ive made decay
before my eyes!!  Aspects have stopped working..   in work from 1996
(tunnel -about the state on online sexuality then) the splash screen should
have a lovely red yellow orange black full-page fade.. in line (1997) ,
images and text should appear as you run the mouse over page , but the
JavaScript doesn't work in current browsers,  work i made in 1998-99
(carrier) has Mac/pc java incompatibilities in current browsers while it
worked perfectly when it was made.. and because of the sun/Microsoft
kafuffle with java,  empyrean (2000-4) needs an antiquated (last century)
Netscape browser to ensure it has the access to the correct java libraries
to function in its complete multi-user state..

 However as the works still function in a lot of other capacities,  no-one
would ever know this unless they looked at and could read the source code.
So when you archive these sorts of works  do you take  into  consideration
that they dont even now a few years later function as they were indented
to..  and who has the hardware and soft ware archives to run works?
conservation is big business i  the painting/sculpture/film  arena.. will it
be in the smaller screen  arena?

 This seems to me to be incredibly important as part of what artists do is
create content by pushing code boundaries, utilizing data bases, and
creating novelty with non standard functionalities.I know rhizome, in thier
net.art archives questionnaire,  asks the artist what the major intentions
or the work are which they would like kept in tact as far as possible..
 should online artists then be making videos of our  work  to document them
in the state they're .but then th interactivity is gone..? they could all be
re coded of course to work now, but that would mean if hard/software
develops the same way as it has then they simply wont work again in a few
years again..  leading to endless updating-  and whose responsibility is
this.. the artist who doesnt get paid for it..or the archive who does it
with public monies to preserve culture?
or do we let works form this period of experimentation in the emergence of a
new artform die.. or just keep the ones which use really really standard
forms?

 melinda

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Paul Koerbin" <pkoerbin@nla.gov.au>
To: <empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
Sent: Sunday, June 27, 2004 12:16 PM
Subject: FW: [-empyre-] Preservation

I guess this question is addressed to the National Library participants.

A reasonable question. Given the great deal of resources required in
archiving digital objects, no-one wants to duplicate work.

That said, one answer I would give is: just try and find a complex web
site in the Internet Archive and see what you come up with - you will, I
am sure, be very frustrated. The ambition of the IA is to sweep the web
and pick up as much as it can. This is fine in a take what you can get
sort of way, and there is no doubt the IA is a magnificent resource.
But, for example, since they cannot do the quality assurance work on the
scale required for the amount of resources they attempt to archive it is
full of gaps and dysfunctional web sites. Since they archive without
express permission of the publishers their harvesters must follow
robot.txt rules so if the site says "don't index me" it will not be
gathered. The IA will also takedown archived resources upon request.

The difference with PANDORA is that being selective we seek permission
to archive and we also do quality assurance testing and "fixing" of
archived resources. For example, if you archive a site with RealMedia
you only get the .ram metafile with your harvester. Unless someone
chases up the publisher for delivery of the actual media file (.rm .ra)
then you have not archived the site properly. The IA does not do this
sort of thing whereas we do. Also, we need to be able to plan for long
term access; leaving it up to a third party that may or may not exist in
50 years time does not really meet the responsibilities the Library is
charged with.

That said, the Library of Congress, for example, works with the IA to do
quality collections such as those for September 11 and for various US
elections. The IA could certainly be used as an agent to do the
harvesting, but the long term management of the files for preservation
needs to be managed elsewhere. I would also say that we, the National
Library, are in fact working cooperatively with the IA and a number of
other leading players in the web archiving business to develop
strategies, tools, procedures etc. for advancing web archiving. We are
both members of the International Internet Preservation Consortium. See
the IIPC web site for more about this http://www.netpreserve.org

Paul

-----Original Message-----
From: empyre-bounces@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
[mailto:empyre-bounces@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au] On Behalf Of Henry
Warwick
Sent: Friday, 25 June 2004 5:48 PM
To: soft_skinned_space
Subject: [-empyre-] Preservation

Why?

http://www.archive.org/

how does it differ from what you're trying to do, and in light of
archive.org's efforts, why replicate it?

HW

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