'Documenting practice through a New Media Handbook'

New media presents a number of issues for archives and museums. Firstly and
fundamentally is the issue of technological change. Most media go through
periods of advancement that affect how artists use it and respond to its
challenges, but new media is in an extreme position: innovation is a major
driver. Not only does it change the material with which the artists works but
it alters the reference points that they are responding to. But innovation has
more than a material affect, relating to software and hardware. The need to
critique and explore the boundaries of what is new is dominant aspect of new
media practice as we deal with the increasing complexities of living in
computer based culture. Furthermore, it is also an influence on the public
perception of what an artwork is: how it operates and what value it has.

For an artist, a curator or an archivist, the implications are therefore quite
profound. Issues around stabilizing, protecting and restaging work is a the
subject of dedicated research from institutions such as the Guggenheim and The
Langlois Foundation. However, the issue goes beyond conservation to the nature
of knowledge itself. If the context in which the work is made and the public
understanding of how it operates when it is presented depends significantly
upon the use of technology at a given time, we have to recognize that
innovation conditions the meaning of the work when it is represented through
documentation and the archive. A website designed in 1997, for example,
demonstrates not just design obsolescence and technological simplicity, but to
a contemporary audience it is naive in its understanding of internet
communication and more likely to be regarded with condescension than respect