Panel Statement
Panel: New Media Archives- New Intelligent Ambiances
You can’t save the spirit of a new media work by fixing it in time or place, anymore than you can save a life of a butterfly by pinning it to a wall. Animated beings persevere not by stasis but by mutation and replication, so this talk explores such “proliferative preservation” as a strategy for preserving the notoriously mercurial artifacts of new media. The current state of proliferative preservation includes such models as the Variable Media Questionnaire; the future may hold more speculative evolutionary paradigms such as algorithmic and ecological archives. Generally considered a culprit in the destruction of traditional human artifacts, nature may end up serving as the inspiration for such new automated paradigms for the perseverance of culture. Yet, as successful as genetic algorithms have been in preserving the petaBytes of information stored in the DNA of living creatures, harnessing genetic algorithms to propagate human artifacts would breed a new host of ethical questions about authenticity and responsibility.
- Jon Ippolito, the recipient of Tiffany, Lannan, and American Foundation awards, Jon Ippolito exhibited artwork with collaborative teammates Janet Cohen and Keith Frank at venues such as the Walker Art Center (USA) and ZKM/Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe (Germany). As Associate Curator of Media Arts at the Guggenheim Museum, he curated Virtual Reality: An Emerging Medium and, with John G. Hanhardt, The Worlds of Nam June Paik. Ippolito’s critical writing has appeared in periodicals ranging from Flash Art and the Art Journal to the Washington Post. At the Still Water lab co-founded with Joline Blais, Ippolito has been at work on three projects–the Variable Media Network, ThoughtMesh, and the book At the Edge of Art–that aim to expand the art world beyond its traditional confines.
Full text (PDF) p. 1267-1272 [Title slightly different]