Internet Art and the Archive

Abstract

Internet art is ephemeral by nature and several initiatives have been taken to preserve it for the future. Apart from formal archives holding art of this kind, there are also artworks which exist outside these web based institutions. In what way can they be regarded as archived? In the article, criteria are suggested which can be used to judge whether an artwork is active or archived and these criteria are applied in the analysis of twelve different artworks. Different kinds of dating are important for how the status of a work is perceived by the visitor. The concepts of explicit and implicit archiving are used to characterize archiving of Internet art, where works can be "dead" and "alive" at the same time.