The public has come to think of digital assets as permanent—that whatever is uploaded to the internet will be there forever. However, the rapid evolution of operating systems and technology has meant that many files are no longer accessible in a contemporary digital landscape. Computers and computing are neither straightforward nor static. Digital preservation, especially the preservation of delicate materials founded in obsolete technologies, must be carefully tailored and highly proactive in order to effectively conserve access to artifacts or surrogates (Owens, 2018).
Net art is a genre of art that operates within, and with reference to, the Internet (Museet for Samtidskunst, n.d.). Because of net art’s inherently digital and ephemeral nature, it is especially vulnerable to obsolescence as online environments change. Net art conservationist Annet Dekker describes net art practitioners as ‘collaborating’ with internet processes and networks to create their work. The unreliability of the early web as a nonhuman collaborator produced an ‘aesthetic of failure’ that is a key visual and conceptual mainstay of the form (White, 2002). Because of the risk associated with its storage and exhibition in tandem with this innate instability, net art is rarely collected or preserved by institutions (Laurenson, 2014).
Net art doesn’t have explicit form; the interaction between artwork and interface is a part of the composition
Preservation of net art demands a high level of institutional alignment and planning because technologies and artifacts must be preserved in close relation to one another. Information professionals tend to digitize for reasons of access or preservation (Conway, 2014), but in the case of net art, access can only follow preservation when the initiative is in the context of an archival digital environment because of the blurriness of the borders of the work (White, 2002).
Net art doesn’t have explicit form; the interaction between artwork and interface is a part of the composition. Taken to its logical extreme, the entire terminal used to access a work of net art could be considered part of the piece. With this framing and without explicit answers provided by the artists, emulation of software or operating systems becomes necessary to view net art in its proper context.
Dekker (2018) describes the conservation of a work of net art as combining original and fabricated elements. Preserving only the ‘website’ part of a net art artwork destroys or at least disconnects the wider frame of literal context (e.g., links to other websites) from the more implicit body holding that work such as the interface (White, 2002).
The obsolescence of past operating systems and web browsers has led to emulating digital environments to preserve the context and access of works of net art. Emulation is the process of mimicking the behaviour of another computer environment. It is used in digital preservation to access software and digital files relying on obsolete technological environments (University of the Free State LibGuides, 20).
There are two key features of net art that make software or operating system emulation a good strategy for preservation of these resources.
First, the functionality of a net art website tends to hinge on the moment in time it was created in. This can be thought of as the part of preservation relating to the medium of the artwork. Second is the idea of external connectivity (Laurenson, 2014). This idea ties back to the greater context referred to by the net artwork; the conceptual basis of the work that is operating within the web. The external connectivity can be other digital assets or the technology used to make the net art function. This can be thought of as the part of preservation relating to the vehicle of the artwork. While preservation on both sides of the equation can be about functionality, it is also about emulating an environment that the code of the net art instance is referencing and activating. This becomes a key strategy in accurately preserving and conserving the whole work, and not just the aesthetic or material essence of that work.
Preservation of net art resources, then, relies in equal parts on the creation of digital surrogates of the original net art and on the emulation of software and operating systems as contextual environments for the resources. This need to replicate functionality leads to more possible points of failure than typical digital preservation, which relies simply on the representation of resources through surrogates (Conway, 2014). Net art is contextually tied and is often only operational within its original environment without extensive code intervention (White, 2002). The use of emulated software and operating system scaffolding to conserve this context for interpretation as well as access is both pragmatic and responsible from a long-term preservation standpoint.
The nature of materials in digital environments is one of continuous and adaptive shifts. Source code may remain consistent, but the way in which it is executed can be invisibly altered by software at any time. Emulation of software attempts to provide access to net art in its natural context so that these works can exist independently of ever-evolving technological progress.
Net art preservation is a complex undertaking. To provide faithful access to the artwork, the original object and its code must be preserved, along with metadata, links it referenced, and the software platforms it was built or operated within. An artwork is not valuable without context. From a research angle, the context around a work of net art speaks to the conditions of its creation. This includes technological and cultural conditions the work reacts to. From a user perspective, the context helps a layperson see the work simply as it was meant to be seen. The use of emulated environments as digital ‘frames’ for net art is a useful practice that helps institutions and archives provide as much of this context as is possible, while still considering today’s preservation protocols and digital capabilities.
CONTRIBUTOR
Davis Scherer
McGill School of Information Studies graduate, 2023
IMAGES
1. StarryNight, 1999. Screenshot, ca. 2000, Internet Explorer 5.0 for Windows 2000. Retrieved from Rhizome’s Net Art Anthology.
2. MTAA, Simple Net Art Diagram, ca. 1997. Animated Gif. Retrieved from Rhizome’s Net Art Anthology.
WORKS CITED
Conway, Paul. “Digital transformations and the archival nature of surrogates.” Archival Science 15, no. 1 (2015): 51-69.
Corcoran, Heather, and Beryl Graham. “Self-collection, self-exhibition? Rhizome and the New Museum.” In New collecting: Exhibiting and audiences after new media art, edited by Beryl Graham, 99-109. London: Routledge, 2014.
Dekker, Anne. Collecting and conserving net art: moving beyond conventional methods. London: Routledge, 2018. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781351208635
Lassere, Monique, and Jess M. Whyte. “Balancing care and authenticity in digital collections: A radical empathy approach to working with disk images.” Journal of Critical Library and Information Studies 3 (2021): 1-25.
Laurenson, Pip. “Old media, new media? Significant difference and the conservation of software-based art.” In New collecting: Exhibiting and audiences after new media art, edited by Beryl Graham, 73-96. London: Routledge, 2014.
Owens, Trevor. “The craft of digital preservation.” In The theory and craft of digital preservation, 72-80. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018.
University of the Free State LibGuides. “Emulation.” Accessed November 25, 2023. https://ufs.libguides.com/c.php?g=1113411&p=8118680
“What is Net Art.” Net Specific. Museet for Samtidskunst. Accessed November 25, 2023. https://netspecific.net/en/netspecific/what-is-net-art.
White, Michele. “The aesthetic of failure: net art gone wrong.” Angelaki 7, no. 1 (2002): 173–194.