[-empyre-] Re: archiving...........

[hight@34n118w.net]

The importance of archiving is huge.   So much data is lost and as such we
lose reference points, patterns, dialogue, alternative viewpoints
expressed artistically and/or in data and coding.  We need to not only
worry of losing artwork , but of information, voices, open dialogue, and
context in time of issues and images current and future.

The budget is not only going toward a war that is uttlerly out of control
and so deeply complex, but also is now accelerating cuts and turning from
arts education, curatorial  and restoration concerns, arts funding for
projects, organizations, and venues as well as cuts for education,
medicare, and social security, clean air laws being revised and revoked,
hospitals closing, jails actually letting out inmates out of no other
alternative....

it is critical that we work to not lost electronic data and keep it at close
reach......now perhaps more than ever.......

  I am sick of trying to teach here in california
in a system that is so f-ing precarious that the program I teach my
english class in has almost been fully erased each of the last two years
and it was made to assist working adults with families, students too poor
to take loans....The professors and students are so passionate but it is a
money game...

I have friends that work in museums at all levels, in the national park
system, in so many other fields that are downsizing, outsourcinge, phasing
out....etc....

The military budget is so massive and all the cuts are massively
under-reported.  The spike in people after the election trying to marry
intpo canada (100,000 spike in one day...)  was funny for about a minute
then deeply poignant.  sad.

I have been racking my brain trying to think what we smarty pants
intelligentsia liberal folks can do...

I think a site that is a newstand service for college kids etc is
one..........it can be used for study aids......a virtual newstand for
multiple subscriptions online.........but!

imagine all the real news that would be available....real....less filtered
from places out of the f-in u.s like the bbc....(which I faithfully read
and have seen MANY things in that are not reported here at all that are
american stories in many areas...)


Idea number 2............  work semiotics like the republicans have so
mastered..........we must find ways to protest in organized fashion
utilizing teleconferencing, post flash mobs, wireless, video conferencing,
multi city and multi national simultaneous actions, discussions, embargos
of
some kind..........but large, organized......galvanized.........tech
savvy........forward......not the unfortunate spin victim awaiting of
traditional protests....right in the gaping mouth of the dark side of
semiotics............of the goofy disorganized liberal impotent threat to
morality......as opposed to effective action and communication......

I have been so depressed with the "War" quaqmire and all the money and
lives pouring into it that I have can hardly bear the news each
day......and I have never never been this way.....


archiving of work is important......but we need to still have some
resources and hope to create with and for...........



> I don't know if you have seen the new Bush proposed budget. Military
wildly goes up, everything else - funding for school programs, medicaid,
farm aid, amtrak, on and on, either goes down or is eliminated
altogether.
>
> What does this has to do with anything here? The United States is
heading towards a new kind of fascism, with Democrats effectively
rendered meaningless, and with the poor increasingly unable to survive -
at all. Bush has already opened up the Alaska wilderness for drilling
and the National Forests for exploitation by local groups.
>
> BBC predicts a catastrophic US economy within 4-5 years. The point is
that we have been living, as best we can - I'm surviving in NYC on
around $15k a year - on the margins, which are increasingly shrinking.
It's not going to be a question of archiving, but a question of our very
survival.
>
> Make no mistake about it - it's fascism, dictatorial, of a different
sort; the lumpenproletariat, to borrow an old-fashioned phrase, can
scream all it wants, even publish; the same for the proletariat: the
difference is that none of this will have any efficacy, any voting
power, any say in a world increasinglydefined by the Republican
planetary slaughterhouse of nations, women, gay, animals, plants, any
religion other than ugly Christian fundamentalism, and so forth and so
on. This is a war, and we are unarmed and disorganized. There will be
nothing left if something isn't done.
>
> And archiving of art? No matter what side you're on, it's a privilege,
and I doubt that, say, my work will survive - after all there's nudity
and crisp political vulgarity among other things.
>
> Who will decide what to preserve ultimately? At least in the US, it
won't be you and me.
>
> Useless protesting has knocked the hell out of us. We ran around like
idiots screaming against Bush during the Republican National Convention
here. We were half a million strong. And Bush's ratings went up, way up.
>
> We should be talking war at this point. People are dying world-wide;
where are we? What are we doing with ourselves? Why are we so fucking
passive? What is to be done?
>
> - Alan
>
>
>
> On Mon, 7 Feb 2005, David Daniels wrote:
>
>>
>> http://www.thegatesofparadise.com
>>
>> Dear Folks,
>>
>> Something we should all realize is that we are at the most 8 years away
from
>> every computer easily having the capacity to be a web server. Perhaps all
>> will be web servers. Our work may last as long at this web which will
probably be called the 2000-2025 web. Each human being will have a web
domain
>> to do with as they please. These are perhaps what will not die. Pehaps
someone in 2505 will say I think I'll say something to Alan Sondheim
2000-2005 today.
>>
>> Your friend,
>>
>> David
>>
>> http://www.thegatesofparadise.com
>>
>> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Alan Sondheim" <sondheim@gmail.com>
To: <list_netbehaviour@www.netbehaviour.org>; <sondheim@panix.com> Cc:
"soft_skinned_space" <empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
>> Sent: Monday, February 07, 2005 12:24 PM
>> Subject: Re: netbehaviour : Re: [-empyre-] Who decides and what to
preserve
>>
>>
>>> 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
>>>>
>>>> On Mon, 7 Feb 2005 16:57:41 +1000, Sharmin Choudhury
>>>> <sharminc@dstc.edu.au> wrote:
>>>> > I am not sure if anyone has brought this up but this is something I
>>>> >
>>>> think is
>>>> > important. PANIC does not specify what to preserve and does not rate
>>>> >
>>>> digital
>>>> > objects by content. We leave it to the curatorial organisation to
>>>> make >
>>>> that
>>>> > decision. Yet how a curatorial organisation would come to a
decision fascinates me, because often what we consider not worth
saving is >
>>>> exactly
>>>> > what the future generations might consider as being important. As a
>>>> >
>>>> case in
>>>> > point, the ancient Egyptians did not think it very important to
>>>> record >
>>>> the
>>>> > lives of the ordinary folk, the workers who built the pyramids and
>>>> so >
>>>> worth.
>>>> > Yet one of most important discoveries in recent times have been
>>>> camps >
>>>> for
>>>> > the said workers where the workers have left their mark and bits and
>>>> >
>>>> pieces
>>>> > from their daily lives. Anyone have any comment in this regard?
>>>> >
>>>> > Sharmin Tinni Choudhury
>>>> > Research Engineer
>>>> > DSTC PTY LTD
>>>> >
>>>> > ______________________________________