[-empyre-] Digital Objects

[Dragan Espenschied]

Dear empyre,

thank you very much the invitation to participate in this discussion.

In my work as a conservator of digital art (mostly internet art), I am often
confronted with the term 'object'. On the Digital Preservation 2014 conference
in Washington, an event by organized by the Library Of Congress, the following
terms were used for what digital conservators deal with:

- objects
- content
- stuff
- petabytes
- stuff unlike any other
- executable content
- cruft
- live object
- digital landfill
- master

The only term that actually makes sense to me is 'stuff unlike any other', as
Matt Kirschenbaum described software. A digital 'object', in all forms that I
encountered it, was always a metaphor out of control. There are no objects in a
computer, only symbols, but these symbols make absolutely no sense unless
something happens with them.

A text file can maybe treated like an object, but it is useless as an object
unless there is this complex process of mapping the symbols contained in there
to an incredible processes that in the end moves a bitmap generated from
rendered vector outlines of representations of symbols that humans can visually
decode to an OpenGL texture map that makes up the 'content' area of a GUI window
... grossly simplified. -- So the object is what stays when the computer is
turned off, something that can be printed, buried in a mountain vault.

Especially when taking into account networked computing, objects seem like a
rather misguided attempt to define boundaries, so that infinity can be divided
into understandable pieces. And the objectification of the digital (in the form
of for example 'apps') has proven that this idea is very successful. However it
is impossible to represent digital culture in the form of objects. It is more
productive to think about performances (for what computers do), activities (for
what humans do), how time passes for each actant, and what are the potentials at
any of these possible points.

Still, in the end, after doing all this, I will need to conserve it in a form
that -- stays when the computer is turned off.

AMA!



-- 
Dragan Espenschied
Digital Conservator
Rhizome
at the New Museum
235 Bowery
New York, NY 10002
212-219-1288 x 304
http://www.rhizome.org/