RE: netbehaviour : Re: [-empyre-] Who decides and what to preserve

["Paul Koerbin" <pkoerbin@nla.gov.au>]

Just a brief response to point about the preserved documentation of a
performance in someway misrepresenting the original performance ...

Currently, with a selective and accessible archive like PANDORA we have
to seek permission of the owner to proceed with archiving. If we chose
the web representation of your performance for archiving and you were
concerned this would misrepresent your performance you could simple
refuse permission and we would not preserve it. In respect of an archive
like the Internet Archive that does crawling, you could put a robot.txt
rule to deny the IA permission to harvest, or if it was archived you can
ask them to remove it. Ethical institutions and organisations like the
two mentioned will respect your wishes. Of course by putting anything
online you are basically making it available for anyone to copy for
their own purposes. I would also make the point that, should legal
deposit me extended to cover electronic resources we could harvest a
copy for preservation purposes without explicit permission  of the
publisher, but this does not currently exist, so permission we must
seek.

I guess the point would be that any online representation of your
original work should include contextual information of your own
creation, which would be captured as part of the  resource should we
archive it. Also, we create catalogue records that can also include
notes to record the context of the online resource.

Paul

-----Original Message-----
From: empyre-bounces@gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au
[mailto:empyre-bounces@gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au] On Behalf Of Helen
Varley Jamieson
Sent: Tuesday, 8 February 2005 9:41 AM
To: list_netbehaviour@www.netbehaviour.org; soft_skinned_space
Subject: Re: netbehaviour : Re: [-empyre-] Who decides and what to
preserve


life is cyclical, everything comes & goes & in the greater scheme of 
things we're all pretty insignificant. getting over the fear of 
disappearing without trace is liberating. the philosophy of "tread 
lightly apon the eath" encourages leaving as little trace as possible.

as a performance artist i find documentation/preservation a difficult 
subject; the record of a performance is never as good as the 
performance, yet it's often what is more widely seen & enduring. you 
end up being judged by the record of the performance rather than by 
the performance itself. if i wanted to make video i would make video, 
but i want to make theatre. i know that it's important to video my 
work but at the same time i hate it.

however, i'm very happy that there are people out there who are 
interested in preservation, & i love old things, i love museums & 
dusty old libraries & discovering fragments of lost letters under 
ancient carpets or old photos that fall out of hundred-year-old 
novels in 2nd hand shops. i'm an obsessive hoarder with boxes of old 
letters & birthday cards in the attic, a 40-year old car & clothes 
that belonged to my great grandmother. that's my contribution to 
preservation ; )

history is always going to be incomplete, & it's always going to 
favour those with power & resources. despite the best intentions, 
there will always be lost stories & lost perspectives. i remember 
reading an article by dale spender about 10 years ago where she 
predicted that in the process of digitising books, many works by 
women would be lost unless we actively sought their (digital) 
preservation. from the people i know it seems that women & other 
"minorities" are reasonably well represented in the archiving 
industry - but do they have decision-making power? i don't know ...

h : )

>This has been brought up from time to time; it was discussed at the
>Incubation conf. a few years ago. I agree - it _is_ an unarchival
>world, and I think the emphasis on archiving is similar to the
>emphasis on eternity & the fear of death - look at all those photo
>departments years ago that insisted on 'archival prints' so they'd
>stand the test of time - improvisational musicians, just about any,
>know the value and general absence of those evenings when no one was
>recording, it's whatever, in the moment. For my own work I upgrade
>backup and when I can transfer protocols but after I'm gone that will
>be it. When 'I hope not' and of course 'I hope not' I end up
>questioning myself in this regard - what DNA juice is squeezing
>endless labyrinths of time out of me? I'm frightened as hell about
>death and my work revolves around that fright & yet I know rationally
>no amount of archive will reconstitute anything, certainly not
>presence. The Vietnam War was one of the most archived in history and
>the radical re-rights are still doing what's being done to the
>Holocaust - denial - two centuries from now Holocaust (of any sort)
>studies will focus on 1939-45 or thereabouts as most likely mythical.
>If we're going to archive, why not worry more about DNA - those
>attempts which I support to resurrect literally the thylacine,
>Tasmanian tiger? Other species to follow in time - we have to leave
>something behind us beyond slaughter. Again in relation to archive - a
>recent, in fact two days' ago, report indicates the onslaught of Iraqi
>archaeological sites/museums etc. continues with increased fury -
>nothing is protected but the national museum & that has the doors
>welded shut. Our energy should, I think, be devoted far more to the
>preservation of lifeforms on the planet, archiving the real, what's
>left of the wilderness (I don't want to get into deconstruction here)
>- we should be out there in preservation, some of us are I think. But
>why, among digital artists and arts, isn't preservation itself
>questioned to a greater extent? And what is the source of our fear in
>this regard? - Alan
>
>
>On Mon, 7 Feb 2005 20:41:32 +1300, The Paul Annears
><the.paul.annears@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>  There is another related question: why preserve anything (of the
>>  internet) at all?
>>
>>  I recently looked for archived versions of The Concise Model and
found
>>  some pages and some broken links. Not an accurate or complete or
even
>>  indicative sampling of The Model.  There were cute baby photos that
I
>>  had forgotten, and a few hints of what was to come.
>>
>>  Yes, the curatorial classes like to conserve and to archive, and an
>>  admirable impulse it is. Otherwise, for example, we would not know
>>  that 'New Zealand' and 'Australia' (to name just two of many
examples)
>>  were thriving orgies of peoples and cultures well before the
Euro-led
>>  holocausts.
>>
>>  To archive, to conserve, and to chose this rather than that is an
>>  unavoidable urge, not just of the conservator, not only of the
human,
>>  not only of what we understand to be 'the living'.  It is an clearly
a
>>  primitive urge of matter.
>>
>>  However the unarchiveable Sun rises and sets on an essentially
>>  unarchiveable world and I  think that it would be wonderful if the
web
>>  was not archived except sporadically and imperfectly with
unconscious
>>  bias and that it became, in that way, a virtual parallel to and
>>  acknowledgement of the real world.
>>
>>  A transient part-world, dimly apprehended by its inhabitants, awash
>>  with propagandist history and of course hugely defective of memory.
>>
>  > Paul Annear
>>

-- 
____________________________________________________________

helen varley jamieson: creative catalyst
helen@creative-catalyst.com
http://www.creative-catalyst.com
http://www.avatarbodycollision.org
http://www.writerfind.com/hjamieson.htm
____________________________________________________________



_______________________________________________
empyre forum
empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
http://www.subtle.net/empyre