User:Max Dovey/Thematic Seminar/Testing the shelf life MD

Week 1 Testing the shelf life - Annette Decker 24/09/2013 Trimester 1

a bit about Annette - Currently doing a phd in conservation & Documentation of internet art at Goldsmiths university, UK. worked on Multivideo core - foundation for art in public space virtual platform impakt festival moo exhibitions in Eindhoven (fat lab)

_ Ignor Stromajer a famous net artists deletes his history of online based work. This act causes conversation and discussion about preservation of work on internet and the lifespan of digital art (a lot of the work had ceased to function due to browser upgrades etc). The Pompidou famously asked him for a hard copy of his work which he gave them on CD rom , this is now defunct, but the institution still own the 'authentic copy'.

Digital degradation starts to occur when the speed of tech development expires digital art that is reliant on a systematic / networked context to operate and be experienced.

ARCHIVE AGENDAS

Archives are dubious in many ways national archives are set out to 'archive everything' with an honest appearance (state run - people assume this is the basis of authenticity / records. all archives although appear as platonic, neutral, objective and systematic are all based on subjective selection of what is deemed important at the time.

Archive today

Adapting the terms 'original' and 'reproduction' in a world where everything is a copy. formation, use, implication. post prism view of the archive - We encounter a difference between state/institutional public archives and private (online) archives. The public or state archive is often celebrated, trusted as providing records of history of the facts.

Private archives of digital services in a post prism age are now viewed with scepticism , as our data constitutes archives that serve the digital economy.

"We are living in a library of libraries" Foucaut establishing the possibility of what can and cannot be said, " how do we record what is never said" reversing the methodologies of archives to record everything, lets record the invisible. is that even possible any more?

"There is no political power without control of the archive,if not memory' Derrida (archive fever) Derrida looks at the archive as the formation of collective memory that is a discourse that maintains power hierarchies. Derrida introduces the idea that the archive as memory produces new knowledge and is not static, it is a flowing discourse as people retrieve information this is then adapted, rethought and shared. archive storage > static memory > a productive process

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  The first networked library

The Mundaneum - Paul Otlet (1920s) the first attempt to create a relative centre for all knowledge to be accessed remotely. although only successful in concept Google have now backed a museum in Belgium to display this initial attempt for an archive for everything (aka internet) article Mnemosyne - atlas - Aby Warburg created art from editing and combining artefacts.

Lynn Hersham talks to Michael Shanks "evidence always remains' - trying to reconstruct events via records via autonomous agents. what is the definitive record of an event? there never is one. the politics of presence. We are never completely invisible because we will always be traced and recorded. Article

Assement each 2 weeks 2 of us will analyse a text and then present to the class. end of year we shall work on documenting 2nd years work that engage with the subject of the archive.

Reference/ reading material

Archeology of knowledge - Michael foucaut Derrida (archive fever) 'The enduring ephemeral, or the future is a memory' Wendy Chun (2008) critical enquiry 35.1 article Michael Shanks in conversation with Lynn Hershman.