Without addresses (variant 4)

Overview

In 2024 Zentrum für Netzkunst has applied for its first full scale reconstruction project. Although the initiative has received project funding in the past to pay artists to reconstruct their work, this was the first time that a conceptual approach and a methodology for a reconstruction project had been developed. The reconstruction project was funded by Digis "Förderprogramm zur Digitalisierung von Kulturgut des Landes Berlin" as the very first project on digital-born artwork.

Assessment of the data inventory

The artist Karl Heinz Jeron had a copy of the original files on an external hard drive. A clone copy of the data was made and stored on additional storages as well as in the cloud by Zentrum für Netzkunst. However, as the team later discovered, the f.hmtl (index page) of variant 1 was no longer available. The complete archive of user entries was backed up on the external hard drive.

Later in the proccess, through a photograph found in the documenta archive, we discovered that there was a blue menu in the variant 1, but it was slightly different from the menu used in variant 3. Unfortunately, the menu pages concept.html, context.html, and credits.html were no longer available - only later versions of these files from variant 3 were found.

Karl Heinz Jeron also had a copy of the variant 3 files that the two artists prepared for the CD archive.

In Joachim Blank's private archive there were some additional individual files were found - e.g. the original file used for the logo "without addresses" or the redirect files which redirected to later domains of variant 2A and 2B.

In general it was often difficult to prove the age or the version of the archived files.

Reconstruction Aproach

Like many other works of net art, Without addresses is tied to the specific, historical conditions of the Internet and the computer - the so-called hardware and software context at the time of its creation. Since the historical Internet environment in which the work was created no longer exists, it cannot be fully reconstructed.

Alta Vista and Live Search

In without addresses variant 1, the work used the Alta Vista search engine to search online and generate new html pages from the results. The Alta Vista search engine was shut down in 2013 and can not be used for the reconstruction. It would be possible to write a new script using a contemporary search engine and recreate the generative function, but there were several reasons why the reconstruction team decided not to do this.

The internet has changed so much since the mid-90s, that the aesthetics of the pages would be completely different. Back then, a search would return very few results. Today, we could expect an exponential number of results, which would make it impossible to include all the into generated pages. So even though re-coding the work for a contemporary search engine would best preserve the original conceptual framework it would completely change the feel and the aesthetics of the work.

Rewriting the code using one of the today's search engines would push the preservation problem into the future, since we can't guarantee the longetivity of this external service.

The artists Karl Heinz Jeron and Joachim Blank always understood the work without addresses to be completed after the documenta x. For them, the performative, executive function of the work was intented for a limited period of time. In order to fullfil this fundamental artistic intention, the reconstruction team had to develop a reconstruction strategy that would preserve a static version of the work, but which would nevertheless convey the functionality and interactivity of the variant 1.

Simulation and focus on mediation of the work

After a thorough consultation with the two artists, the reconstruciton team decided to design and programme a static simulation of the work as a method of reconstruction. For the artists it was important to crate a new variant of the work which would mediate the feel of the computer, the internet of the time to the contemporary user. Even though we can't predict how the future internet habits will differentiate from our current state, we decided to comment on some parts of the work to explain the original functionality. Trying to find a balance between the mediation and keeping the work intact for individual exploration, the team tried to keep the comments and explanations rather reserved.

The idea behind the simulation is to create an environment in which the work is presented, described and commented at the same time. For this reason, the work itself is embeded in the so-called "meta area", which provides the user with additional information about individual parts of the simulation. For example, it explains which parts of the original files were no longer available for reconstruction. Or how the generative process worked. The "meta-area" serves as a space for gaps and missing parts of the work. The video interview with the two artists has also been embedded in the meta-area. The video is intended to provide a different access to the work, without having to enter the extensive description in the netart repository.

The "meta-area" was designed in such a way so that it is easy to visually distinguish the work without addresses from the additional layer of information. The sidepanel with the additional information can be closed to enjoy the work on its own completely.

The reconstruction team decided to hint at the original size of the screen by blending in a short animation of a monitor - implying the original size and resolution of the work. without addresses functionality is completely contained within this area. There are simulated pop-up windows which can be moved on top of each other and closed.

The design and implementation of the simulation was supported by Marija Stupar, who also documented the conceptual decisions as well as HTML, CSS and Java Script code differences from the code by Karl Heinz Jeron.

The simulation has been developed for viewing on desktop use only. It can't be accessed from mobile devices.

Used Files

index-wa.html

This file is the index of without addresses. The f.html file (original index.html) of without addresses variant 1 has been lost, or rewritten in the past. The artist Karl Heinz Jeron reconstructed the index page based on his file of without addresses variant 3. Marija Stupar was able to reconstruct the menu bar using screenshots and photos from the documenta archive. Although there was a menu file in Joachim Blank's archive, it was a menu bar from variant 3, which differed from the menu in variant 1. The background image of the map and the logo without addresses were both found in Joachim Blank's archive.

index.html

The index.html is the index page of the whole simulation and contains the splash page as well as the "meta-area" of the simulation. The index.html was entirely created by Marija Stupar.

concept.html

The concept.html used for the simulation is an original file from the archive of Karl Heinz Jeron.

barthes.hmtl

The barthes.html used for the simulation is an original file from the archive of Karl Heinz Jeron.

context.html

The context.html of viarant 1 was no longer available. The reconstruction team was only able to find one documentation image of this page in the documenta archive. The original context.html likely included further parts, since on the photograph, there is a visible scroll bar which indicates a longer page. Only the visible part of the context.html was reconstructed for the simulation by Marija Stupar from the photograph.

User entries

In variant 1 of without addresses the users were able to generate new html pages. These are commonly referred to as 'user entries' in the documentation and the wiki texts. In variant 1, total of 37,843 documents and 684 MB of data were generated over the course of documenta x. After the end of documenta no other variant was able to generate new entries.

The generated pages were created by an algorithmus that searched online and created a new page. The images found were very diverse in nature - from photographs, company logos, parts of web design (such as parts of menus, dividing lines, simple background images which were used as 'tiles').

The reconstruction team decided to select only a portion of the original user entries. Divided into 4 groups, the team has reviewed the original entries and decided to include 946 entries. These were selected in a way to represent the diversity of the generated pages. The selection should allow the viewer to understand the general nature of the pages. When working with such a large database, automatic data analysis could be an interesting tool.

For the variant 4, the reconstruction team faced a new challenge - the protection of copyrights and private data in the user generated pages. After a long discussion and an external legal advice, the reconstruction team decided to anonymize the selected user entries. Although this was a major interventition in the original files, anonymisation ensures that the reconstruction team, and especially artists, will be protected from future legal action. As without addresses variant 4 is available under the CC-BY-ND licence, this was the only option to avoid any potential risks.

Variants

Following the data model of Rhozime's Artbase the reconstruction team decided to adopt the concept of variants in the netart repository as understood by the Rhizome preservation team.

At the start of the research there were only two known variants - the original v1 and the CD v3. However, while searching through the screenshots documenting the work, two additional URLs were found on sero.org and klondike.icf.de. Unfortunately, the artists could not remember the exact nature of these two variants. There was also not enough evidence from the secondary documantation to judge the exact form nor the exact inception dates of these variants. It is likely that the artists moved everything there was from the original HP-UX server to their own server.

Technical Narrative

In 2009, SFMoMa proposed a new method for documenting of software-based artworks called "technical narrative", which they published in The Electronic Media Review of the Electronic Media Group. Based on this method the reconstruction team has created technical diagrams for each variant of the work without addresses. These are stored in wikibase as PDFs in the documentation section under each variant. In this way, it's possible to see the shift in the functionality of the work as well as platform-specific characteristics. A functional description of the work as a platform-neutral description is also part of the wiki documentation.

Secondary documentation material

The reconstruction team has collected available material on without addresses variant 1 (reviews, articles, flyers, screenshots, photos, videos) and published it under respected variant entries in the netart repository.

In addition, both the original code and the reconstructed code were commented and documented by Karl Heinz Jeron. The original server set up at documenta x was also described by him. A video interview was recorded with the two artists, in which they describe the work, its inception context and their intentions.

Legal Situation

The two artists have to transfer the rights of use of without addresses variant 4 (both the simulation as well as the documentation material) to the Zentrum für Netzkunst e.V. by means of an unlimited contract. The simulation is published under the licence CC-BC-NY 4.0 and the metadata for the entire reconstruction under CC 0.