> The question is whether incorporation of computational elements and
> New Media in architecture can compromise their lifespan?  This is a
> nasty question.

This is one we have come face-to-face with on the San Jose Airport
project. The initial concept (from the Master Plan available at
http://www.sanjoseculture.org/pub_art/documents/SJA-MasterPlan-2nd-finallow.pdf)
for this Art & Technology infrastructure was to create "flexible
technological platforms" on which Art & Technology artists could create
a rotating body of work.  I believe that the Master Planners envisioned
large LED walls or plasma screens with fixed computational or playback
resources that could be shared by artists on an ongoing basis, etc.

Our approach, after much research and deliberation, has been to
completely
separate the computational elements, other than the network
that was being installed as part of the airport systems anyway, from the
eventual artwork.  Hence, our activations of the space are focused on
the glue between the artwork and the building:  Power, network,
mechanical fixturing, and appropriately ventilated and hidden spaces for
computers, sensors, electronics, and whatever we have yet to think of.
As new works are commissioned that use our activations, artists will
specify their own front-end technology.

There's a lot more detail on this in our schematic proposal at:
http://www.sanjoseculture.org/pub_art/documents/AAT_schematic_full_FINAL.pdf

In future programming cycles (as measured in years, between about 18mo
and say 5 years), parts of the front-end technology from previous works
may be added to the pool of available infrastructure for future artists
- it may become obsolete quickly, but it will be available if
appropriate.  On the back- end, we have set aside a significant amount
of empty rack-space in the central equipment room, as well as providing
an "Art Server" whose dedicated purpose will be to provide streaming
data in an extensible format like XML that artworks can tap into from
the network to get information about flights, times, delays, baggage,
weather, gate allocations, etc. for use with their work.  The Art Server
will also provide imagery from CCTV-like 'ArtCams' which can be moved
around the building, as well as some rudimentary processing on these
video feeds to extract useful data for artworks.

Airport IT will enforce a strict quarantine policy for any network-
connected equipment to ensure that OSs are patched and up to date, etc.
and at a systems architecture level, they will enforce separation
between the art VLAN and the airport systems VLAN. So all this to say,
let the technology evolve, and in the design phase do the minimum
required to ensure that spaces can appropriately accomodate work.

As flexible as our design strives to be, it has been very important to
remember and communicate through this process that the airport is an
airport, not a gallery: its primary purpose is not the artwork that's in
there, and the artwork has to be appropriate for the experience of the
people who will encounter it.

This was actually a theme we found that we needed to articulate often to
technology artists, who in general we found are used to being able to do
gallery artworks that are far less constrained than typical public art.
There aren't many technology artists who have faced the constraints of
public art (which incidentally apply to all public art - the genre is
simply far more restrictive than gallery art).

Our aim is that the art infrastructure can grow and change with the
building over its anticipated lifespan of 50 years.

<M>