The Mirror of Impermanence

From the The New York Times: "Washington, Dec. 4 - For people awake and aware during the Apollo Moon landings, the most unforgettable images sent to earth were of astronauts in their ghostly white spacesuits framed by the gray landscape of another world [. . . .] Now, the protective wardrobe that made this possible, the multilayered suits that still amaze visitors when shown at space museums and exhibitions worldwide, are in danger. Because of unforeseen deterioration of some of the space age materials used to make them, experts say the once-durable moon suits are disintegrating and may not be around for future generations to see [. . . .]" (Leary)

Nothing is permanent, but few things are as impermanent as electronic hypermedia. Stone is more permanent than paper, paper more lasting than aluminum alloy, aluminum alloy more stable than polyvinyl chloride. Impermanence can be a factor of eons, centuries, decades, or years passing. Impermanence can be anticipated, or it can come about - as did the rapid deterioration of the Apollo Moon suits - unexpectedly.

Definitions of permanence and impermanence are dependent upon function and expectation of what's being defined. The pyramids were intended to last "a million years." Vellum manuscripts were understood to be subject to destruction under certain conditions. The moon suits performed their appointed function, even though the museum curators anticipated that the suits would provide visitors with a material artifact for many more decades.

Writers and artists who ventured into the "digital arts" in the last twenty years have understood that impermanence was a risk. All of the technology of the late 20th century evolved rapidly and has taken no prisoners, so to speak. We saw 78, 45, and 33 rpm records replaced by tapes and then CD's and then Mp3 files. It's become increasingly hard to find "record players" to listen to your 78's - but these turntables do exist, and a market of sorts has arisen for those who prefer vinyl. Film and video advances demonstrate the process of change we have come to expect (our Super 8 movies have been replaced by digital video). It is costly and time-consuming to reprocess old films and build projectors to play them, but museums and film preservation societies exist that do this kind of work. While the archiving infrastructure is incomplete, efforts continue to keep older technologies alive. But, at each benchmark in the advancement of the technology, a large number of works were left un-re-mediated: not all music is still available; not all films have been restored.

Therefore, although the pace of change has been dizzying, digital writers and artists of even a few years ago had reason to believe that, given the cash and the will, some of their works, along with the devices to display them, would be available in years to come. Museums have begun planning for the preservation of digital installations and displays, and computer museums are stockpiling old machines (although not the software to run them, in many cases).(1) Writers and artists can only hope that these efforts continue and thrive.

However, in the last five years, the impermanence issue for digital writers and artists has changed markedly - in a kind of virtual burning at the stake, we are feeling the flame. We currently find ourselves forced to sideline the posterity question (including the archiving efforts) and consider a more immediate danger: that the works-in-progress cannot be finished before the technology alters, and that, as a consequence, the creation may never reach an audience at all. The "Threaded Voices" (see Rubric Column to the left) of digital writers and artists that are linked throughout this piece will give you some sense of the concerns that hypermedia authors share about this rapid obsolescence - but two examples will suffice to illustrate this phenomenon. Talan Memmott's Lexia to Perplexia was published this year; it won the trAce/Alt-X Award and was short-listed for the Electronic Literature Organization Awards. This piece took over two years to create, but in November of 2000, just as Talan was in the process of publishing it, the Netscape 6 browser appeared. Many of the features in Lexia to Perplexia were not supported. Talan then spent several months recoding a piece that was already "completed." My own experience has been similar. Fingerprints on Digital Glass, a collection of eight Web stories that have been published in on-line magazines, was slated to appear in 2001. Although most of the stories were published between 1999 and 2001, many Javascript features needed to be entirely recoded to meet the new W3C standards. This kind of abrupt change in the technology has always made the Web an unstable place in which to create art - but now the WWW may be downright inhospitable.

Recto / Permanence / Impermanence / Alteration / Obsolescence / Obliteration / Verso