/ Archiving in the Digital Age
Preserving internet art presents significant challenges within the realm of academic discourse due to its distinctive characteristics and the rapidly evolving technological landscape. The following factors contribute to the difficulty in effectively preserving net art: technological obsolescence, the dynamic and interactive nature of net art, fragility of online content, intellectual property and copyright concerns and documentation and metadata. In his interview with Heather Corcornar artist and digital conservator Dragan Espenshied stated, “I guess this mistreatment of digital artefacts as objects and finished forms is happening because digital archiving has absorbed traditions from classical archiving” (Espenshied and Corcoran in Perks, 2016, p. 216). 2 In other words, the conventional methods of archiving employed in physical museums and galleries are not suitable for preserving digital artefacts, as they can lead to the misrepresentation and mistreatment of these works and their unique characteristics.
Firstly, it is important to recognise that net art objects often do not possess a definitive, finished form. As a result, attempting to preserve them as mere screenshots or screen recordings is not only impractical but can also be detrimental to the integrity of the artwork. Consider, for example, Kiran Subbaiah's "CRASH RUN" (2002), an artwork that simulates a crash on the user's desktop upon opening and installation. A simple screenshot of this artwork fails to capture its impact, as the emotional response it elicits from the user is intimately tied to the experience of their personal interface being disrupted. Secondly, the perception of internet artworks as objects can lead to the neglect of the networks in which this artwork originates. Net art is indivisible from the networks it operates in, and ejecting it from its space can lead to a conceptual misconception of the work. Yet, this quote leads to another interesting observation, where, being the new art movement, it drastically needs its own approach to archiving rather than just implementing the rules of classical archiving techniques. To overcome this, Espenschield is proposing to approach net art not as an art object but as an act of performance and archive it accordingly. “Espenschied has argued that this digital artefact is only complete with a performance that requires interactive interplays of software, say, a vintage Netscape browser and Windows 98, to come alive and be readable to a human being, and the knowledge of a browser interface to make it run” (Espenshied and Corcoran in Perks, 2016, p. 215). 3 In other words, when archiving inet art project, the environment in which this project lives should also be archived in order to give ability this the artwork the ability to perform itself. “The idea of performative archiving is something I discussed with Michael Connor, Rhizome’s Artistic Director - how archiving is an action itself. It is not about understanding every single nucleus of every single artwork, but rather, finding a way by recording the computational performance. That would be the act of archiving” (Espenshied and Corcoran in Perks, 2016, p. 216). 4
Another aspect that should be considered when archiving is the attitude towards the net art projects. When considering them solely as an immaterial object, it poses a threat to metadata and documentation. Net artworks are not as immaterial as they are often perceived to be; rather, they are composed of different materials that do not manifest in the physical realm. This includes elements such as code, script, software, and even hardware, which can all be considered materials integral to internet artwork. Take, for instance, the works by JODI.org, which are predominantly code-based. A notable piece, "OSS" (2000), is a CD-ROM (Compact Disc Read-Only Memory) that, upon execution, commandeers the user's computer to create chaotic and aesthetically intriguing experiences. It turns elements of the operating system into components of its composition, causing the desktop to tremble, spawning windows incessantly, and transforming the mouse into a drawing instrument. When addressing works that are strictly code-based, it is important to acknowledge that their metadata or categorisation will significantly differ from that of non-Internet artworks. This dictates the development of new methods for collecting data and objects to ensure that the artwork is preserved in a manner accessible to both viewers and computers.
Lastly, the introduction of the social net, in other words, Web 2.0, started the debate around the Post-Internet art and the usage of existing platforms as a canvas for artists to express and critique the culture, society and politics.“Before, you may have had the hacker type artist, someone who was technically proficient, whereas now you have someone who knows what kinds of avatar image will really fly and will be interesting to the other users - what will create an interesting narrative of another system” (Espenshied and Corcoran in Perks, 2016, p. 219). 5 A good example here would be the work VVEBCAM (2007) by Perta Cortright . In her work, she is using YouTube as the main platform to deliver her content. Her work uses the tropes usually associated with cam girls, but instead of sexualising the content or looking directly into the camera in an engaging manner, Perta is playing with the filters of the camera itself. The artist is presenting her work on the social network platform, meaning that YouTube is in charge of any updates or changes to its network. This causes complications for archiving such works due to the lack of control over the material and its form. The additional layer is the social aspect of these platforms, such as comments and online threads. In her work, Petra is engaged in all-out flame wars with her commenters. She published the video with a list of accompanying keywords copied from spam accounts, thereby drawing in viewers who were trawling YouTube for titillating or offensive material, and cheating their expectations. Thus, the dynamics of YouTube as an early social media platform were incorporated into the work itself. This social aspect is hard to preserve as it is a momentary happening with the users having full control over their comments and engagement with the projects that add the temporality issues into the archival discussions.
Despite these challenges, ongoing efforts are being made within the realm of academic research to preserve internet art. Organisations and initiatives devoted to net art preservation are exploring innovative strategies, such as emulation, documentation practices, and archival methodologies, in order to safeguard these digital artworks for future generations.
Founded in 1996, UbuWeb is a pioneering "pirate shadow library" that represents a radical alternative to institutional archiving (Goldsmith, 2016). 1
Operating entirely outside the traditional museum-grant system on a gift economy with donated labour and server space, its importance lies in its deliberate anti-institutional, fluid, and accessible model (Goldsmith, 2016; Snodgrass, 2017). 2
It challenges the very norms that often hinder digital preservation: it openly contests copyright to ensure free, global access to avant-garde materials, and embraces an ephemeral, "purposely unstable" existence (Goldsmith, 2016, p. 88). 3
As its founder states, "By the time you read this, UbuWeb may be gone. Never meant to be a permanent archive" (Goldsmith, 2016, p. 90). 4 This acceptance of contingency rejects the idea of a fixed, authoritative archive, proposing instead a living, vulnerable repository that mirrors the precarious nature of the net art it often hosts (Rhizome, 2017). UbuWeb’s practice of “impurity, juxtaposing high art with outsider work, poetry with punk rock, and theory with ephemera, actively reimagines the avant-garde canon and offers a model for archiving that prioritises open access and curatorial subjectivity over permanent preservation (Goldsmith, 2016). 5 This approach directly engages with the challenges of preserving digital culture, presenting archiving not as a neutral act of conservation, but as a sociopolitical practice concerned with distribution, ownership, and the democratisation of cultural artefacts.
For a project like The Wrong Archives, which seeks to document the sprawling, decentralised, and often ephemeral iterations of The Wrong Biennale, an awareness of these theoretical and practical challenges is not merely academic; it is foundational to the archive's methodology. The tendencies highlighted by theorists like Espenschied, such as the fallacy of treating digital works as "finished objects" or the necessity of "performative archiving," directly inform the curatorial decisions that structure the archive. If the archive were to simply catalogue screenshots or dead links, it would commit the very "mistreatment" Espenschied warns against, failing to capture the networked, performative, and experiential essence of the biennale. Therefore, to achieve it properly is to move beyond traditional categorisation. It requires developing a framework that can document not just the artworks' final forms, but also their technical dependencies, their social and platform contexts (like the comment threads integral to Cortright's work), and the user's interactive experience (as crucial to Subbaiah's CRASH RUN). By explicitly engaging with these challenges, The Wrong Archives positions itself as a critical intervention, an archive that, in its very structure, argues for a new set of preservation principles tailored to the mutable and layered reality of net art.