Given the current rate of change, new media projects have
the ephemerality of "performances" rather than the permanence
of "works". One has only to recall the boom and bust of
CD-ROM projects from five years ago to see that rapid evolution
entails rapid obsolescence.
EAT"s problematic "Nine
Evenings" of 1966 offers something of a precedent. The technology
developed for the series was only temporarily available.
However, everyone agreed that the project concepts themselves
could have a longer life. They could be returned to later,
not to reconstruct what had been done originally but to
invent a new realization within a later technocultural context.
The presentation will explore the precedents found
and the possibilites suggested by taking this observation
seriously and centering work with new media on the axis
of notation/realization instead of the axis of technology/possibility.
