the significance of maintaining online access to obsolete Adobe Shockwave Flash (SWF) files through the source code

Anna Mladentseva wrote an interesting article on conservation, archiving and performance of flash-based pieces. She mentions how I kept what was left of Karaoke (2006) on it’s original page, and included at the same page the Rhizome’s Conifer archive of the piece working but also have the original .swf and .fla files available on the website.

On conservation of netart, archiving, code and performance.

Anna Mladentseva (2022): Responding to obsolescence in Flash-based net art: a case study on migrating Sinae Kim’s Genesis, Journal of the Institute of Conservation, DOI: 10.1080/19455224.2021.2007412
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19455224.2021.2007412

This article outlines an alternative method of migration facilitated by reverse engineering techniques—specifically decompilation—and foregrounds the significance of maintaining online access to the obsolete Adobe Shockwave Flash (SWF) files through the source code. On this premise, the source code is re-imagined as a site for further re-enactment, allowing a departure from its current role as a marker of ‘authenticity’.

Filed under: Articles / Texts, Net art, Of interest, archiving, code, conservation, flash, net art, PAMAL, performance, Resurrection Karaoke

Italian “translation” of Separation / Séparation

Mauro Carassai and Renata Morresi made an Italian powerpoint and javascript translation (2012) of Separation/Séparation (2002). They didn’t have the flash source codes and so imagined how translation of this piece of E-lit could be done from its experience alone.

Translation, Mutation, Decay.

The powerpoint version is hilarious (after clicking through 184 slides it stops – the poem can’t be read completely).
The javascript version doesn’t work in all browsers and lacks some features, but does give an impression. ( View source: https://bram.org/separation/Javascript_Translation.html )

That’s what time can, will do with a piece of electronic art, I thought.
E-lit also is like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field; the grass withers and the flowers fall.

Carassi and Morresi wrote an article about their adventure which appreared as Verbal Disengagements: Translating Language Games in Annie Abrahams’s Separation/Séparation in Translating E-Literature (2015). Eds. Regnauld, Arnaud and Abrioux, Yves. Bibliothèque de l’Université Paris 8 (Saint-Denis, France).

Filed under: Articles / Texts, e-literature, Net art, decay, e-literature, flash, Mauro Carassai, Renata Morresi, Séparation, separation, translation