Without addresses (variant 4)
Overview
In 2024 Zentrum für Netzkunst has applied for their first full scale reconstruction project. Even though in the past the initative has aquired project budget to pay artists to reconstruct their work, this was the first time a conceptual approach and a methodology was developed for a reconstruction project. The reconstruction project was founded by Digis "Förderprogramm zur Digitalisierung von Kulturgut des Landes Berlin" as the very first project on digital-born artwork.
Reconstruction Aproach
Without addresses, as many other net art pieces, is bound to the specific, historical conditions of the Internet and the computer - the so-called hardware and software context at the time of its creation. In without addresses variant 1 the work used Alta Vista search engine to search online and generate new html pages. The Alta Vista search engine was shut down in 2013 and can no longer be used for the reconstruction. It would be possible to programme a new script using contemporary search engine and recreate the generative function. However, the internet changed so much since the mid 90s, that the aesthetics of the pages would be completely different. Back then the search only returned a few results. Today we could expect exponential amount of results which would not be possible to include all the inte generated pages. So even though recoding the work for a contemporary search engine would preserve best the original conceptual framework it would completely change the feel and the aesthetics of the work. It would also carry on the preservation problem onto the future, since we can't ensure that the longetivity of this external service.
Since the historical Internet environment in which the work was created no longer exists, it cannot be fully reconstructed. 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.
Data inventory assessment
The artist Karl Heinz Jeron posessed a copy of the original files on an external hard drive. A clone copy of the data has been made and stored on additional storages as well as on the cloud by Zentrum für Netzkunst. However, as the team later found out, the f.hmtl (index page) of variant 1 was no longer available. The full archive of user entries was secured on the external hard drive.
Later in the proccess through a photography found in the documenta archive, we discovered that there was a blue menu in the variant 1, which was however slightly different to 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 posessed a copy of the variant 3 files which the two artists prepared for the CD archive.
In Joachim Blank's private archive there were some additional individual files found - f.e. the original file used for the logo "without addresses" or the redirect files forwarding 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.
Variants
Following the data model by Rhozime's Artbase the reconstruction team decided to adopt the concept of variants[1] in the netart repository as the Rhizome preservation team understands it.
At the begining of the research there were only two known variants - the original v1 and the CD v3. However, while searching through the screenshots that documented the work there were two additional URLs found out on sero.org and klondike.icf.de. Unfortunatelly, the artists did not remeber the exact nature of these two variants. Nor was there enough evidence based on the secondary documantation to judge the exact form nor the exact inception dates of these variants. Likely, the artists moved everything there was from the original HP-UX server to their own server.
Technical Narrative
In 2009 SFMoMa proposed new method for documentation of software based artworks called "technical narrative", which they published in The Electronic Media Review by Electronic Media Group. Based on this method the reconstruction team has created technical diagrams for each variant of the work without addresses. Those are saved in wikibase as PDF in documentation section under each variant. This way it's possible to see the shift of 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
Simulation
The idea behing the simulation is to create an environment in which the work is presented, described and commented at the same time. Therefore the work itself has been embeded in the so called "meta area" where the user get's additional information on individual parts of the simulation. F.e. 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 any potentional blanks and missing parts of the work.
User entries
In variant 1 of without addresses the users were able to generate new html pages. Those are commonly called 'user entries' in the documentation and the wiki texts. In variant 1 total of 37.843 documents and 684 MB 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 which searched online and created a new page. The images found were very difirent in nature - from photographs, logos of companies, parts of webdesign (such as parts of menus, division lines, simple background images which were used as 'tiles',
The reconstruction team has decided to select only a portion of the original user entries. Devided into 4 groups the team has reviewed the original entries and decided to include 946 entries. There were selected in a way to represent the deversity of the generated pages. The selection should allow the viewer to understand the general nature of the pages. For work on such a big database of data an automatic data analysis might 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. Even though this was a big interventition into the original files, the anonymization ensures that the reconstruction team and especially artists will remain protected from future legal actions. Since without addresses variant 4 is available under the CC-BY-ND[2] licence it was the only option to avoid any potential risks.