>  I would be interested in knowing migration of older net based  
> works, weather artists are happy to
> see them die along with the software, are emulators possible to  
> keep these works alive?

For us it's an issue with no fixed answer.  Some works lend  
themselves to archival, simulation or emulation, while others simply  
can't be.

We leave some of our early web-based artworks to languish in the wake  
of technological change, while others we will maintain for as long as  
we can. An example of the latter would be, 'CNN interactive just got  
more interactive' which adds features to the pre-existing news site  
cnn.com if you visit the url cnnextra.net.  Although it has been  
running for eight years and is maintained by us in so far as we  
update the graphic look of our intervention in tandem with changes in  
the cnn website, it will presumably end at some point, probably when  
it ceases to be possible for our presence to co-exist with cnn's.  In  
that respect, this performative public artwork (as we see it) would  
also end, and documentation of it is all that would persist perhaps.

In general we have most problems with networked gallery works that  
rely on other people's live data (like Decorative Newsfeeds or Short  
Films about Flying) and decide on a case by case basis whether it's  
worth making a version of them that can last longer than the live  
components themselves.  In both these cases we have sold the works to  
public collections and as a part of that process have made (or will  
make) archived simulations of the works for the longer term.  Such  
provision doesn't take into account the need to upgrade hardware and  
emulation techniques and for our part, that is the responsibility of  
the institution.  If we're around, we (will) help out as much as we  
can, but otherwise circumstance dictates.  Obviously the character of  
an artwork changes if it was once live and then is contained as an  
offlined, archived work and we only do this if we think it might be  
worthwhile, while accepting that in general artworks at large change  
as time passes as does our perception of them.

bw

Jon & Alison

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Unprepared Piano, ISEA 2006, San Jose CA
Edge Conditions, San Jose Museum of Art, CA
Flat Earth.  Animate! commission with Channel 4 Television.