[-empyre-] emulation and multiple nodes as archive method

[Jason Nelson <heliopod@yahoo.com>]

To begin: a brief antidote: Those children of the
eighties, who so loved cartridge Atari and the first
Nintendo and couldn't find reliable old machines,
programmed emulators to play them and now these games
live on and continue expanding their cultural imprint.

It seems the most powerful archiving tool is people
loving and owning whatever work it is you want saved.
If there are fifty thousand copies of something
floating around and the devices used to view/play it
are obsolete, then at least a few of those people will
create an emulator. Then that emulator and the work it
plays will be passed around again. This is not to say
that archiving should be left to the public, as many
little known works are clearly worth saving. But that
it seems any time institutions attempt some
technological solution, a group of teenagers do it
better, faster and for free in their garage drinking
warm beer. 

So perhaps what should be done, at least in the case
of areas such as digital music, net art, software art,
web page archiving is that we should offer the work
for free. Give people the chance to download work,
make it their own. Also provide people with space to
set up their own archives of work, or support those
digital communities which would create emulators. A
multi-nodal archive would be much healthier and
dynamic. 

some thoughts,

Jason Nelson


 


	
		
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