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<div><font face="Arial" size="-1" color="#000000"><br>
</font><font face="Arial" color="#000000">What about
Euripides?</font><br>
<font face="Arial" color="#000000"></font></div>
<div><font face="Arial" color="#000000">Written on papyrus in an
extinct language 25 centuries ago, the plays have been preserved as
texts and continue in performances without Euripides lifting a
finger. They are also reiterated, repurposed, reinterpreted and
even re-made (see "The (Re)making Project - Charles
Mee at<u> http://www.charlesmee.org/html/about.html</u>.</font></div>
<div><font face="Arial" color="#000000"><br></font></div>
<div><font face="Arial" color="#000000">Are our technologies harder to
decipher/decode than an archaic language? Are we imprisoning our works
when we make them in technologies -- even code?</font></div>
<div><font face="Arial" color="#000000"><br></font></div>
<div><font face="Arial" color="#000000">An aspect of mischief in my
own work as an artist in is to embrace the physical obsolescence of
works by embedding their content in the context of archaeological digs
and lost civilizations. A case in point are "The Electronic
Chronicles."-- stories of a future archaeological dig which
excavates our own culture as if it was the past . Created in 1994,
with overzealous use of newly available html magicJ ( alignment and
tables) and written on a yellow pad on the subway, it is now
inaccessible on a CD of "pioneer web works" accompanying The New
Media Reader which demands System 9. Update it? No. It is,
in itself now an archaeological artifact. (Its also still visible on
line).</font></div>
<div><font face="Arial" color="#000000"><br>
I know these things are painful for archivists and artists to
contemplate , but isn't it also emphatically charming and Sisyphean
to have our work "frozen" in time?. We tend to experience
both the newness and obsolesce of technologies as ascendant through
time, and indicating revoluiton, but what is really
changing?</font><br>
<font face="Arial" color="#000000"></font></div>
<div><font face="Arial" color="#000000">Speaking of shelf life as one
of stasis; this is signage from the American Museum of Natural
History, which, aside from terrifying kids, lauds the process of
decay as life enabling. </font></div>
<div><font face="Arial" color="#000000"><br>
"A square foot of dirt in a forest holds four times as many dead
insects and animals as how many humans there are on all of the earth.
If the pile just grew and grew the forest wouldn't get any light and
air and everything would die. This is called the Cycle of Nutrition
and Decay."</font><br>
<font face="Arial" color="#000000"></font></div>
<div><font face="Arial" color="#000000">When work is buried by its
form in new technologies, its wonderful that there are those who would
put their ear to the ground to hear its heart beating there and
resurrect it, but considering the span of our lifetimes and those of
our literal or philosophical heirs, what kind of time are we
talking about? Years, Decades, Millennia?</font></div>
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<div>Adrianne Wortzel<br>
Professor, Communication Design<br>
New York City College of Technology<br>
City University of New York<br>
300 Jay Street, N1113<br>
Brooklyn, New York 11201<br>
Phone: 718 260-5512<br>
Fax: 718 254-5888<br>
Email: awortzel@citytech.cuny.edu</div>
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