Re: <nettime> Goodbye Classic ?

[olia lialina <olia@profolia.org>]

A bit late, but after reading David's story and many reactions it
provoked I'd like to contribute to the Goodbye thread with my recent
experiences. Three cases.

A weeks ago, I planned to show the Web Stalker to my students, but
the program didn't start. I was bit embarrassed that I can't show an
important example of early net art, but was very happy to realize that
Director is dead. I found a lot of beautiful stills online and in the
books of Rachel Green, Christiane Paul and Tilman Baumgartel.

My own old projects (html, java scripts, gifs) still function
perfectly, but when i need to mention them, I prefer to show
the screen shots. Especially good are the ones in Tilman
Baumgartel's Net.Art because the book is old and screen shots
were made in old browsers, the actual environment of the works
are visible. I should say that those reproductions are of
more authenticity that the fully functioning originals. The
internet is too fast now, browser doesn't fit, users don't
leave feed back. (more thoughts are in my interview to Neural
http://art.teleportacia.org/observation/victims_broadband.png)

In 1998 Heath Bunting launched _readme.html
http://www.irational.org/_readme.html In the end of the 90s it looked
like an elegant peace of hypertext that made reference to formation
of online publications linking logic, and web notions of being owned
and remain invisible. The subtitle of the work is "own, to be owned
or remain invisible". Today the work looks like an outdated hypertext
joke.

But, by connecting every word of the article to the same word but
with .com Bunting made a tool that I use already for ten years to see
how words on the web change their meaning and owners. And the way
WWW grows stagnate and is reshaped. In 1998 many words were still
not registered as domain names, in 2000 each of them was, in 2001
many were free again, in 2003 they found new owners. From 2004 only
rare free verbs and adverbs from this page are not subjects of domain
auctions.

I show this old fashioned piece to the first semester students and
they do find it outdated -- until I tell them about my experience.
So how to preserve it? What would one have to archive to be able to
understand and enjoy it? In my opinion: the paragraph above and a good
screen shot.

forever yours
olia








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