The Electronic Representation of Information: New Relationships between the Virtual Archive and its (Possible) Referent
Abstract
“Our life is half natural and half technological. Half-and-half is good. You cannot deny that high-tech is progress. We need it for jobs. Yet if you make only high-tech, you make war. So we must have a strong human element to keep modesty and natural life.” ”” Nam June Paik [1]
The present work focuses on the new relationship generated by electronic information between the virtual archive (the Web in a broad sense, certain specialized archives in particular) and its referent (material reality in general, museums, inter-art practices, and artworks in particular). It proposes that the relationship between information, its representation and the referent (or in other words, the relation between reality and the conceptual construction of reality) has to be re-thought.
- Douglas C. McGill, “Art People,” The New York Times, October 3, 1986, http://www.nytimes.com/1986/10/03/arts/art-people.html (accessed September 1, 2013).
