Response to "Keeping it Online"
Article by Ben Fino-Radin
Fino-Radin presents a problem that I, too, have given a lot of thought to. How do we go about preserving internet art when factors beyond our control change the infrastructure? A series of screenshots would seem insufficient, especially for interactive and social media-based sites. However, I feel that we can't think about the preservation of internet art in the same way that we thinking about the preservation of earlier art forms such as painting and sculpture. Those can be stored and cleaned and physically exist always, though its arguable that they're documentation in photos is just the same as taking a screenshot (they're main impact is in real life). I think it's important that we think of websites less like paintings and more like Allan Kaprow's happenings. These events were works of art that were performative and repeatable, but occurred in different times and places so that it was almost impossible to document it all succinctly. The purpose of the art wasn't to be documented, but rather to be a part of it. I think that this is precisely what many websites are doing. Just because the web exists in a 2D, virtual/conceptual realm doesn't mean that it should be treated as 2D art. It's something more. It's something different. It's experiential. We must accept that we can never hope to capture an all encompassing document of that.
