RE: [-empyre-] Preservation

["Jim Andrews" <jim@vispo.com>]

have been thinking of melinda's post. i sympathize, melinda. it is a
quandry.

i keep coming back to something joseph kosuth wrote about his own work. he
said he didn't think the objects themselves would survive. instead, he felt
that if anything of his work survived, it would be in the influence it had
on the questions that were asked, routes taken and abandoned, approaches.

the objects themselves, it seems, particularly in digital art, are mostly
rather doomed. yet it also seems clear that art on the net is not doomed but
is really quite admirably in a perpetual state of flux. where there is no
flux, no change, well, the art suffers a different death. mummification
rather than outright annihilation.

concerning net.art, some may prefer to go with as standard a collection of
technologies as possible to ensure maximal longevity. the problem there is
that the functionality of such standards tend to be quite limiting. and so
the death of that art is longer but is still finally outright annihilation
rather than mummification, which is several orders of magnitude longer.

so we are left with the question of what it is we wish to create in our
lifetimes. and apply ourselves to that with all our might. what we are after
is not beyond the grave.

it seems like people are going to be using a computer and using the web/net
for quite a while. and the art has actually developed somewhat over the
course of ten years. think of how we ourselves have changed in ten years
concerning what we find interesting in net.art. that isn't lost, apparently.
it is reflected in the approaches people take in their net.art. via
experiencing works that try to take it further. i could no more will myself
to go back to pen and paper than i could reverse time. And still feel there
is much to do though how long the work itself will last is a moot point. the
empyrean remains ideal. yet it is fleshed out as never before.

ja