This piece is just one part of a series of artworks under the title, “this will be the end of you”. By creating the series of artworks, Nelson hopes to reflect on the capacity for invention, for he is interested in the “late 19th century inventors, who created amazing, and to some extent implausible inventions”*. Inspired by a late 19th/early 20th century inventor, who documented her ideas, Nelson “[has] decided...to remake the book in a new media form. Each work will be different, each barrelling forth her ideas in words, in sounds, in images and in interface. The artistic style should represent her page from page change”*. Perhaps, this is why each part of the series does not seem to connect with any of the other parts while displaying a uniform format or style.

Nelson believes that “everything, all artworks, will dissolve eventually. [He imagines] the most compelling, the most charming longevity is not the artwork itself, but within the brief thought it concocts in the reader/user/viewer’s mind”*. However, by reproducing the book as hypermedia poetry, Nelson is
actually working with the idea about the possibility of ransforming different art forms. Longevity of net art is one of the main issues artists need to consider when creating their works. Certain features of the piece may be lost in response to the changing technology. For example, a change in monitor size
and resolution would affect the appearance of the artworks. In response to this problem, some artists produce artworks as variable media (ie. allowing them to be destroyed and recreated over and over again as long as they are produced in the same medium) while others consider making artworks that are independent of medium so that they can be recreated using another medium once the existing format becomes obsolete.

Resonance of any pieces of artworks would decrease over time. For net art, longevity is highly dependent on users’ interest and the change in coding system, interface and technology. The proposed solutions for extending the ‘ life expectancy’ of artworks are only temporary solutions. Both methods require a large amount of time investment. If one is willing to spend time
updating or transforming his/her artworks, it is even more important that he/she be knowledgeable about the new system, interface and programs. “What seems appropriate is that the book[, on which Nelson’s work is based], has an entry about something the inventor calls “endless paper”...”*. Clearly, creating artworks as variable media or medium-independent artworks is a endless project. Is it worth spending a significant amount of time on a project? Perhaps, it would be more interesting for users to witness how the work degenerates over time.

References:
Graham, Gordon. The internet:// a philosophical inquiry. New York: Routledge, 2001.
* These quotes are taken from the interview with Jason Nelson.

Written by: Ann Wong