[NetBehaviour] Backups are not enough!

[marc garrett]

Hi Alan,

Yes, context...

Through the years much artwork has vanished off the Internet, and like 
what you allude to not just because of a hack. It is a fact of life that 
various artists who once created some extremely imaginative, insightful 
net art, networked artworks have just given up. Of course, this has 
happened for many reasons. Such as some just not being able to spend 
their time and personal monies in the up-keep/updating of their work in 
accordance to ever-changing browser modernisation. Some just could not 
cope with their work not being accepted by more traditional galleries 
due to the nature of an immaterial medium not being considered as viable 
product. And because the slow up-take of traditional 'fine art' 
institutions, colleges, universities not teaching or connecting their 
students to such contemporary art, thus stunting the growth and 
influence of net art - this could also could be seen as a political 
stance, as well 'blind' ignorance.

It is not just a coincidence that many of the artworks which were not 
supported by many of the media art historians from the early net art 
years, have now vanished. Perhaps if there was not so much of a divide 
between the 'heroic period' gang and the rest of the 'then' expanding 
net artist communities at that time. We would be discussing things in a 
more positive light. The lessons here have not been learnt and this is 
obvious when looking at the larger media art organisations on the 
Internet, much of it possesses either a nationalist drive, or a more 
creative industry (corporate) intention thus accumulation of data or 
creative ventures, through a more hegemonic protocol. The vanishing is 
not just about if the technology holds up, but also to do with gate-keeping.

 >I've read somewhere that the best solution to keep a binary artwork in
 >it's original form is to keep it 'alive', meaning it must always be
 >circulating on different networks with connected people knowing the
 >original aspect and the present context in order to keep the relation
 >between both.

Yes, I have heard about this as well.

 >It means you can not create now (within networks) like you create before
 >(with oil), you now should take care of the context (environment) before
 >thinking about the object you're working on. what does it mean? i don't
 >know, but it seems we won't go back to prior art practices (they always
 >can be included within present forms), but we have also to think giving
 >other forms to networked art practices. Backups are not enough!

I really do think that the relationship between the Internet and 
physicality is more important than ever. That the idea itself lives 
outside of the Internet in various forms much more now, whether this be 
in public spaces or in books and periodicals, as external 
signifiers/representations of the content or subject explored in one's work.

marc



marc garrett a probablement écrit :
 > > It's funny, I love HTML - sometimes I wish for the days when one can
 > >  just upload a simple page of HTML. But because we are now all
 > > socially networked, the threat of others (hackers, spammers) taking
 > > advantage of possible flaws and weaknesses in the systems are much
 > > higher. We also change passwords but no matter how safe we think a
 > > system is sooner or later some bugger comes along and proves that you
 > > were deluded, to think such a thing.

i think this discussion raises another issue: the content relies on the
context. Even if data are backed-up, if the system become unable to read
it, what remain from the content? this is a question about art, the
relation between art and history. I know people, and i did myself, some
pieces which where quite invisible and then destroyed, things can
totally disappear, even on the net. but the main difference between an
object , let's say a painting (oil on canvas), and a dataset for example
(binary 64), is that even the context is changing, the painting remains
but the dataset is becoming rapidly something else than thought when
created...
I've read somewhere that the best solution to keep a binary artwork in
it's original form is to keep it 'alive', meaning it must always be
circulating on different networks with connected people knowing the
original aspect and the present context in order to keep the relation
between both.
It means you can not create now (within networks) like you create before
(with oil), you now should take care of the context (environment) before
thinking about the object you're working on. what does it mean? i don't
know, but it seems we won't go back to prior art practices (they always
can be included within present forms), but we have also to think giving
other forms to networked art practices. Backups are not enough!

i hope this is understandable, if not , i'll write it in french  :-)
let me know...

a+
yann


 > > The most important thing really is to have back ups, copy of the
 > > whole server so everything can be put back up again. Even this takes
 > > time.

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