Episode 010: Shu Lea Cheang

Show Notes

This week’s show features legendary net art pioneer Shu Lea Cheang, interviewed by our very first guest host, Emma Dickson. Together they discuss the conservation of Shu Lea’s piece Brandon (1998-1999), how the remnants and ephemera of creative practice lives in archives, institutional link rot, and Shu Lea’s fruitful decades long collaboration with a programmer whom she’s never met.

Links from the conversation with Shu Lea
> Shu Lea’s website: https://mauvaiscontact.info
> Brandon: http://brandon.guggenheim.org/
> Restoring Brandon: https://www.guggenheim.org/blogs/checklist/restoring-brandon-shu-lea-cheangs-early-web-artwork
> Emma's website: https://emmadickson.info
> Emma’s walkthrough of Brandon: https://youtu.be/qq2_t3U_f9U
> Emma's TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@__emmadickson

Join the conversation:
https://twitter.com/ArtObsolescence
https://www.instagram.com/artobsolescence/

Support artists
Art and Obsolescence is a non-profit podcast, sponsored by the New York Foundation for the Arts, and we are committed to equitably supporting artists that come on the show. Help support our work by making a tax deductible gift through NYFA here: https://www.artandobsolescence.com/donate

Transcript

[00:00:00] Ben: From Small Data Industries, this is Art and Obsolescence. I'm your host, Ben Fino-Radin, and on this show, I sit down with artists, collectors, curators, and conservators, people that are shaping the past present and future of art and technology. I've been looking forward to sharing this week's episode with you all for so long, not just because we'll get to hear an extended conversation with legendary net art icon Shu Lea Cheang, but also because we have a very special guest host today. 

[00:00:32] Emma: Hi, I'm Emma Dickson 

[00:00:34] Ben: Now, before I hand things off to Emma, just a few housekeeping items. First, just a reminder that you can now leave voicemail for the show by calling 1 (833) ART-DATA, that's 1 (833) 278-3282. Feel free to leave questions or respond or comment on anything you hear on the show. 

And second, just a mild content warning, there are no graphic details, but this conversation will touch on instances of anti-trans and anti queer violence and hate crimes. Now without further delay, let's hand things off to our guest host, the brilliant and talented Emma Dickson. 

[00:01:11] Emma: My day job is sort of Data Engineer work. I work at Artsy, I also work at Webrecorder as a general developer, and I take side jobs wherever I can doing... I'm going, gonna call it conservation technician work. So I'm really interested in digital art, time-based media, electronic art, whatever you want to call it and I've worked on several teams as sort of a technician on conservation efforts, and archival projects, and that's sort of where my passion is. 

So I was a part of the 2017 team, between NYU and the Guggenheim that restored Shu Lea's 1998 to 1999 work, Brandon. Brandon is a Sci-fi Roadtrip take on the life of Brandon Teena that uses audience interaction in a couple of points, and draws really heavily from court transcripts of other hate crimes against trans and, you know, sort of LGBT people in general. so it takes from court cases, medical records and sort of historical records of trans people and it weaves that all in together into a road trip that's the general idea.

It was a wonderful project. It was a huge amount of work. It was great. I hadn't encountered net art before. I think the like closest thing was Pittsburgh, where I'm from is very invested in reminding everybody that Warhol was born there. So I was aware of some of his sort of time-based media sort of works or video art, but that was really the only exposure to that sort of art that I had had. So when I started looking at Brandon, I was really just blown away. Honestly, I think a lot of it was just like the power of the piece. It was so well researched, and it was so beautiful there was just so much in the code base. You know, it took me like a year to read through even, you know, close to all of it.

Yeah. And I got really invested in the piece. I think it was because it was just so well done and so interesting. And I hadn't seen anything like that before. And when I was done on the project, I got a tattoo about, about the piece. So I was sort of invested at that point. I was in it, and it was really formative for me, it made me want to, you know, keep getting jobs in the field so I was in a good position to talk to her again and see what she was up to. 

So when I started talking to Shu Lea I asked first about a bit of her background and how she kind of got into the field because I was mostly familiar with her work from sort of a dry, you know, observer position. So I was interested to see what she thought about it. 

[00:03:44] Shu Lea: Yeah so, I want to probably start from the beginning. I really wanted to make cinema so I studied cinema. At the same time, it was late seventies, early eighties so this was really the beginning of the portable video medium became available or assessable to many artists. But the eighties is also quite a time for a lot of protests.

So we were always using these portable video for documenting on the street. So I will say, throughout the eighties and nineties, you know, we were using a lot of video and got into cinema. At the same time, the early nineties is the web. The web, the internet became available.

So this is a time I sort of jumped on to the super highway, got diverted and became calling myself homesteading cyberspace, or squatting the server, whichever server I can find. So in a certain way by the time I made Brandon 1998, 1999, it seems like a good time to say goodbye to the web.

You know, pretty much by 2000, I kinda got into the post net crash kind of period. So at the moment fictionally, I created a Bionet, which is built inside human body and occupied by the Gannon corporation, which is a biotech corporation. Uh, so if you ask me which medium I'm using now is probably best answered as I'm using virus as my medium now.

[00:05:26] Emma: I saw one of your recent sculptures I think it was Red Pill (2021), which was a sculpture of an enormous virus if I'm right.

[00:05:34] Shu Lea: Already it's a one meter long. I would prefer to make it two meter long.

[00:05:39] Emma: Well, it reminded me of, um, so for some background, for the listener, I have visited the Fales Archives and I've had the chance to look through some of your collection there. And it reminded me, I think when I was looking through that archive, I found small handmade pills. I think they might've been, fairy pills. It was really fun for me when I was looking at some of your recent work. Cause I was like, oh, there's this wonderful thread about, you know, viruses.

[00:06:03] Shu Lea: Yes, it's a interesting speaking of this, uh, recently the archivists at the Fales, actually send me the image of these pills from Brandon and they were really wondering, how to preserve it, because, uh, the cell is actually kindof dissolving in the cell a bit.

You know, we had a Zoom meeting too, and it was actually quite a serious meeting about these pills. They were wondering how to best present it to the public and also the question will be about, uh, how if the plastic material is deteriorating, how they're gonna rescue it and, you know, what's the matter. 

I'm actually probably the least person to care about my archive, you know? But anyway sure I think for the pills, for sure, they should be preserved. And, they are really quite interesting objects, you know.

I think it's more about my time. Somehow I couldn't catch up with myself. I keep producing new work and with the old work I finished one work, I put it aside, I put it in some sort of order, either now with the computer laptop folders or any kind of material, it's also in a folder in a paper folder.

I always think once I put it in, the folder it's fine, then I just leave it there. You have to understand, when I moved out of New York City in 1997, I finally couldn't deal with the gentrification. I moved out of my, my space on Bowery and became the digital nomad. So at the time, of course, all my stuff, you know, 20 years in New York all the works I produce, I had to move somewhere.

I think I did put it in storage for a couple years and finally thinking it really actually start costing quite a lot of money. I ended up with a sort of container, like a 20 foot container and all the stuff in the container, including all these films, videos, you know, whatever, it's all in different boxes and put it all in a container and truck it to the farm and his New York. And, that was that. So think about, let's say from 2000 until the work got collected or donated to Fales library. It must be over 10 years and it's been, it will be, it was in these, container, amazing when we start taking things to, NYU, the Fales library to find that actually all the materials still readable. You know, if you think all the films, a lot of video tape actually still readable, you have open reel videotape. Anyway, so again, when it got brought to Fales library, I guess it was in boxes for another four years, five years, I think Fales library finally organize it, you know, in a way that people can visit and look at.

I wasn't so involved with this whole process at all. I really appreciated that they did all the clean up and organize and they labeled it. So, um, from time to time, yes, they would ask me some questions and all that.

[00:09:28] Emma: I guess it's really interesting to me, that attitude about the archives because your pieces are so complicated, right? They have so many different components and from the little bit of research that I've done they have so much of a body of work of research behind them.

Like Brandon, for example, you know, when you start digging into the code and sort of the material along with that, there's just reams and reams and photographs and all of this research that you, that you had to do. Do you consider that part of the work or it's just sort of what you do leading up to it and once it's done, it's done, it can go in a box?

[00:10:01] Shu Lea: All the research, of course I treasure all the research. Also, because mostly there are really years of work and there's quite a lot of cross references. From collecting different articles, different books, reading different books, reading different references. Of course this should become a part of the collection, or, you know, I am very happy that it could be available to actually study the research process. When I was presenting the work I probably wasn't particularly thinking how people would dig into the back of the, how the work was presented.

Yeah. 

[00:10:39] Emma: How did you develop your research process? It's just so comprehensive. I keep going back to Brandon, because this is the piece that I have looked into the most, but you know, there were whole manuscripts, there was just, there was so much research. How did you develop the process and keep that all straight as you're going through and developing the piece?

[00:10:59] Shu Lea: I think at the end Brandon you have to think about it was done by 1998, 1999. For me, it's almost like 10 years of research into the web as medium, you know, I think I started with using modem with using BBS, for example. So that was you know, very early nineties before the web and before different internet, as a communication mode so I was digging into BBS chatlines and using modems to connect. There's different kind of area of studies of course, I'm very interested in. So it's kind of accumulate and then, you know around that time also the whole gender studies became quite, uh, significant right. It started becoming an issue.

So I sort of dig into the gender study issues. There's quite a kind of moment of cyber feminist. Brandon for example, started with two stories, right? One is Brandon. Brandon Teena who, because of the gender identity issues got raped and murdered on Christmas Eve, 2003.

And then the other story also came out around the same time at the Village Voice is, uh, Julian Dibbell's, Rape in the Cyberspace. So sorta took these kind of. You know, news stories and came out with a one-year museum project. Right? In that process, there was, uh, a lot of research need to dig into, you know, for example, for the Brandon project, I actually went to the court in Nebraska.

So I was able to stay in the courthouse and leafing through all the court documents. Same with you know, I really want to take the highway, the Nebraska highway because I, I kind of have this proposition about, if Brandon would ever got out of Nebraska, maybe he would have a different fate. You know how at that time a lot of homosexual, uh, would actually get out of the middle town or middle America go to east coast, west coast.

So instead of the state highway, I ended up upload Brendan to the cyberspace. But you know, this is a kind of a position I was making. So I really have to go there and drive through, uh, the Nebraska highway. And that's why the whole road trip, uh, interface came about.

[00:13:34] Emma: I didn't realize that you had actually driven on that road, that's so interesting. 

[00:13:39] Shu Lea: Yes. Yes.

[00:13:41] Emma: Did you take any photos? 

[00:13:42] Shu Lea: Yes, there should be some photos. I think all the core documents that I copied was at the archive also, like it should be.

In three by three by six, the piece I did for the Venice Biennale in 2019, I actually study, 10 criminal case, that involved, the person because of gender ID, gender identification, or sexual affiliation that was incarcerated.

And for each case, I also dig in quite a lot of court document. Of course, currently everything became much simpler because a lot of court documents actually is actually internet assessable. 

[00:14:26] Emma: Yeah. It's going to be daunting for any researcher to try to go through all of the research that you've been doing for all of these pieces. It's really an incredible corpus of work. So I'm interested, what is important for you when you're documenting a piece? When you're, you're sort of writing down what people should know about a piece what's important in preserving it? 

[00:14:49] Shu Lea: I'm so bad. I'm really actually really bad. There are always manual that I prepare for the installation. For example, for Baby Love, it's quite a technical complicated piece, uh, with upload of the love song, Wi-Fi transmission live in the museum. Each teacup moves and, you know, each wheel moves and you can sit people. There was quite a bit of maintenance issues so that we actually have the manual for how to maintain the work, during the exhibition, because that piece also at the end traveled quite a few countries or quite a few different museums and festivals. So for that piece, there was manual.

 So there's that, for example, 3X3X6 the Venice exhibition, I didn't get to have it collected and I actually have so much materials, including all the different construction instruction, you know, these materials that I have not quite organized all of them, but of course all the, you know, I do work with a crew of different technician programmer.

They all together put into different manual too, about how to operate it, how to maintain it. Um, so mostly I am probably very careful about these, you know, I have to make sure any of my words during the installation is running well. So in terms of menu, operation, menu, how to open, how to turn on the installation.

I don't know if you know this about like how an artist does these kinds of work. You know, it doesn't matter how complicated the technical you are doing. At the end, when you install in a museum, you had to design the so-called like kind of, one button operation, you know. The technician in the gallery in the museum, they can really turn it on and make sure it's all running. And then you have all these, in case of kind of situation. So this is probably much what I can do, you know, what I was doing, but I wasn't really paying attention about how it gets preserved. Throughout my career, I did lose quite a lot of different installation because there is no way to keep it and so it had to be destroyed in you know for different, situations. So it happens. And, uh, of course I have to, kind of assure myself say, yeah, it could be reproduced, you know, but when the work is not collected, I really have no way to keep it. You know, like for example, the Locker Baby Project, the first edition is actually Baby Play which like a giant, football field it would be impossible to keep it and it would also not be possible to ship it back to America, to me, you know, so we had to destroy everything.

Another piece, a bowling alley, uh, that was at Walker Art Center. At the moment. Walker Art Center claim that they actually collect a bowling alley, but they only collect a web version in a way. So the actual installation also got destroyed. Yeah.

[00:18:11] Emma: I want to ask a specific question about some of your net art pieces. Net art is obviously, you know, specifically vulnerable in a lot of different ways. And you've had one piece restored or, you know, translated from Java applets to Java script. How do you feel about some of your other pieces, would you like to see them restored or?

[00:18:31] Shu Lea: This is one of the question I have also for myself and actually gets me nervous or sleepless sometimes. I was very lucky in a way, when I was doing Brandon I was working at, VOC in Amsterdam and VOC is actually very well organized, new media space. So in, I got there. the pretty much, give me a team, you know, like gave me a team with a designer, interface designer, a graphic designer, programmer, it was quite a team and everything works really amazing, you know, I do the actual installation. I got a sculptor to collaborate and, I had two curator work with me, so it was a very huge project and, in a certain way, It was well done in that sense, you know, you have the project, like a film production.

After that I didn't have this kind of facility or studio that I can work with. In 2000, I got a commission to do a project. It's actually a kind of a woman project that gonna gather together at Hanover in Germany. And they asked me to make the project. So I want to do this project called Carry On it's about a suitcase, carry on suitcase, all the migrant women who came to Germany with all these suitcase. So I really want to be able to examine the suitcase what, you know, of course is going to be makeup, right? So you kind I invite different migrant woman to make up a suitcase or what they would bring with them when they come to the new country.

At a time I thought that we had the collaboration with the airport and so I was going to put these installation at the airport and really put the carry on through the surveillance belt you know, the scanning of the suitcase image, I would, you know, feed it right onto the internet. I really love this concept. So this was in, 2000, 

[00:20:39] Emma: Yeah. 

[00:20:40] Shu Lea: and because it's a German project and I couldn't figure out how to program it live and also I actually had to go through the German system to see if the organizer can give me the support, from the airport and also found a scanning machine company that I am able to basically a hack into the surveillance camera to be able to feed into the internet.

So at the end, the organizers say we cannot help you, but anyway, we do have, you know, German science technology, study research center in Cologne. And in this place, the, you have about, you know, more than 1000 researcher, you have web programmer, you have scientists, you know, many different technical people. So they send me there. They say, you go, there you go there for one month and then you can do the programming. And you can ask for the permission to go to the airport to use the surveillance camera. So yes, I did go to Cologne. This was 2000 and I go through all the procedure, writing a letter to email to the defense department, the national security department saying, can I do this?

It's an artist project, blah, blah, blah. And I didn't get the permission to have those equipment, however, at the same time, so I was supposed to be at this uh, science center to do my research, on how to do the programing. I think particularly difficult part will be to do the live feed onto the net, you know. So I was there for a month and all the programming team, they were like torturing me. They say, Shu Lea you need to do another sketch. You know? So I was just like, everyday, I'm just keep doing sketch and keep, imagine, you know, sort of how to program this. So three weeks pass the programmers are still asking me to do the sketch and then finally three weeks past that we actually have, what do you call it? A conference? So the programmer reported on my case, he presented like 60 pages of PDF files, you know. He really studied my case, right.

He really studied my case of the programming I want to do, and then in the end he informed the director of the center, saying Shu Lea's project is not possible at this age. It would take another three years. You know, until we can study the server flow server site, like kind of sharing server platform, these kinds of thing.

I was like, I don't have three years. I have three months before the show opens. So it was really panicking and finally the director say, okay, we're going to invite a teacher, a professor from a university, who teach, you know, web interface. We're going to invite him to come and to see if he can solve the problem.

So we have another conference, he came and then he's like, I can't do it, but maybe some of my students can do. Right. So, by the time I was due back in, America, I came back to New York and, suddenly the professor sent me an email saying, I'm going to send you a student who might be able to help you, uh, his name is Roger and so I said fine. So I say, okay, Roger, what can we do? You know, now we had to fake this whole thing. We don't really have the real surveillance camera to happen. I still like to process the suitcase and blah, blah. So, he actually told me okay, I can do this in three weeks with Java script, you know, sort of mock up kind of way.

So he did it, right? So, this was 2000. So this guy, Roger, who lived somewhere in Germany, I never met him, but since 2000, he programmed all my database. Right. He's my programmer. So we've been collaborating since 2000 and I still never met him. I talked him. We program through the email communication only.

We have never chatted either by writing or by voice. I don't want to know what he looks like. I never see his face.

[00:25:01] Emma: You're not even a little curious.

[00:25:03] Shu Lea: No, I decided not to. You know, whenever I got a project like this, I came up with this idea of how I want and programming, but I usually would ask him, do you think it's possible to do this or that? And he would tell me. Uh, yes, but Shu Lea it's very difficult, then he say, but it's a challenge and I want to do it and we do it and we will make sure that he gets paid, sometimes pay directly found the commission people sometimes, you know, I get an artist fee I share with him all different way like that. So all these years he has programmed a lot of my stuff.

You know, anything beyond coding, I can do simple coding, but anything beyond simple coding, you know, database, interaction, all these, he did it. He's actually never programmed for other artists. He graduated from art school, but he's now like an IT person. I think he has a company and he sort of, doing like a server provider, that kind of thing. So we've been working for now 21 years. We are about to start a new project. Actually I got a new commission a web commission in London. So I actually started programming in July, for this new project.

He actually offered me a machine in his office, a total machine dedicated to all my projects. Without charge, right? So this is actually quite amazing, but I don't know how to, you know, how to preserve this thing. I really had to do something, you know, but imagine, you know, who can, who can understand this? Right? All my work after Brandon is actually in a machine somewhere in Germany. 

[00:26:53] Emma: Does he have a backup? This makes me nervous. nervous I want to email him and be like, please, please upload that to like

[00:27:03] Shu Lea: He does have a backup, but we have some different storage in our life. For example, this project that I did for Venice Biennial, 2003 Garlic = Rich Air and we were also having a lot of interaction live data, but then because that project was sponsored by, actually some company in New York.

So the server was actually in New York. 2003 in the summer that was big blackout and we lost all the data. 

That was out of his control and he gets angry with this, you know, because of course for him, he actually always have a backup. Especially we are doing a lot of, kind of live interaction, you know, with the audience with the viewer, you know, uploading data, we always have backup. Yeah. Sorry, I'm giving the secret to you so one day you have to go collect my computer hard drive. 

[00:27:52] Emma: I would love to, that would be so fun. I would love to do that. I was curious, so many of the works that you do, have user interaction, right? And it's, a really important part of the piece and like you just mentioned, sometimes you lose that data. So what, how do you, as an artist decide which parts of that are, important to keep, and to try to preserve as part of the work so that if like a researcher came along and was, you know, trying to find out what it had been like to experience this piece.

[00:28:24] Shu Lea: Of course, they are all important to keep. However I find in my personal capacity, I just don't have that capacity to upkeep it. This kind of net art history, all the preservation, the digital preservation, you know, we are not talking about installation and we talk about net art. We can talk to many net artists, you know, like for example, you know, JODI right.

Sometimes we talk about these and, you know, they are much more prolific in the net art scene. They will get collected. They also have the same problem. Sometimes their server went down. So everybody had the same issues about how to preserve their net art work.

I think you can talk to any artists that work in that sort of the early generation of net artist. Mostly at that time, when we start working with the institution, for example, Guggenheim, the Walker, you know, most of these institutions had no idea what the web part is about right.

Of course they, the Guggenheim, for example, Brandon you know, in the beginning was a commercial server sponsor and they sponsor it for three or four years. Then, they decide they don't want to sponsor it anymore. So they return all the materials, you know, I was able to get a copy of all the materials and then I sent it to Guggenheim, you know, officially it was a Guggenheim collection, but then again, there was no department to deal with this. So at that time, the Guggenheim give it to the IT department. And you know, everyday they will worry about the security issues but I still had to have the password to the server, you know? And it's very easy. You can designate my assets without me get into your IT business. Uh, these kinds of things, right? I think it was in IT department for another few years before, you know, there was attempt to restore that and then finally working with NYU with you guys, you know, but, um, it's quite an interesting story if you think about, you know, the, the process, of how most other institution doesn't have that capacity, to upkeep a website, even when they commission and all they collect it, you know.

[00:30:51] Emma: Well it's so difficult, right? The web moves so fast. And you mentioned JODI and you know, one of my favorite pieces of theirs is the famous one where you know, it's JODI with a bunch of eyes, you can inspect it and you can see the diagrams of the giant sort of alien airship. But I was relooking at it recently and I noticed something that I hadn't for, you know, all the other times, which was that they also use the blink tag, pretty prominently in the site.

If you look at the code, and that's of course been deprecated. So I sort of realized, looking at this for like the 20th time that I had been seeing it wrong for years. So I, you know, injected some JavaScript into the browser and saw it blink for the first time, but it's just so difficult to keep up with pieces that are delicate like that.

Which is why I'm really, curious what you, sort of personally think about your own pieces. You know, the process with the Guggenheim was, a sort of translation. You know, it has been re rendered in JavaScript. Do you feel that that's an approach that you would take with some of your other pieces that use Java applets or do you have, you know, a pie in the sky vision?

[00:31:56] Shu Lea: No, no, actually, a lot of these small pieces you saw that this did on my website, actually, Roger also program it. And of course, he knows he can fix it and, uh, however, we don't really have a budget to do it. As you know that it would be such a different operation, different work, sometimes I need to get assets to the old website and, we could do some quick fix. I don't know if you know about this project recently. It's 2014 article Composting The Net. you seen 

piece. 

It actually kind of taking all the archive from mailing list, you know, it's almost like an old tradition thing is like, there's a lot of mailing lists for the new media studies.

Like the Nettime, the Spectra, in New York we still have The Thing. So there's all these different mailing lists, for me, it's a treasure, you know. A lot of artists use it as a platform to exchange news and, you know, I guess it's kind of before Twitter, you know, we, we announced our event on Spectra

Spectra is more Europe based, for example. So we announced on Spectra so, all these, mailing lists have been existing since, nineties, for example. Their archive is totally available, you know. And of course it's very good archive. On their website, usually the archive, you can search it by date, by subject, by a person who contributed.

So composting the net actually takes these archive and scramble, scramble the words and, kind of dropping all the words onto the ground and, at the end, small spouts actually come in up from the ground. You know, I had this idea and I want to do it then of course, I have to, check with Roger, you know, the possibility of retrieving from the server of all these, archive and because they are open archives it's totally assessable. However this work is also dependent on if the archive server is up or down, right. So, at different times we could have that issue if the archive is down.

[00:34:13] Emma: Do you have like a plan for that? You know, like you can, you can sort of see the future coming where these archives are down. Do you have a plan to switch to a static version or will you cross that bridge when you get to it?

[00:34:27] Shu Lea: I actually simply do not have time to worry about this. I think, you know, somehow I keep creating work. I'm right now preparing for a feature film. So this is like my biggest endeavor at the moment. At the same time, I have all these little projects that, cannot seem to go away.

For example, in London, this art project offered me to do, public space and they really want it to be public space interaction website and I really like the idea that I want to do a simple website, particularly kind of reflecting on the pandemic. So I put together a proposal and it's fine. So, uh, it should come out in September. I made sure I send you the website. You know, so again, it's like a whole new project and I'm also making another website, which I'm hoping I am actually. 

[00:35:24] Emma: No, I'm excited. Honestly, I'm excited because, I really like your, your net artwork in particular. I'm really, really fond of so I'm excited that you're doing more stuff.

[00:35:33] Shu Lea: Yeah, but then it's like, you know, of course the reason I'm working with programmer also because these are the people who you are really doing research on which application, right?

You know, Flash is out for sure. You know, which application is workable, which software can be used, you know? sometimes I would talk to Roger he will say, oh, Shu Lea that's too old. You know, that kind of thing. I was like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, but you know, conceptually, what do you think? And then he will say, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's okay. It's doable. It's a bit difficult. I think between me and Roger, the main debate, is how much a compromise I'm willing to take.

There's really always different language you know, different software language can be used and I really, myself does not really have time to go into that research or update myself, but I'm really relying on a programmer has this knowledge. I think Roger only work with me and still working with me because every time I give him a concept and he always find it so interesting, like he still feel, you know, it's for him more like a challenge that he does it.

[00:36:45] Emma: That sounds like a really fun collaboration. That sort of makes me think of one question I wanted to ask you. Which was like, what do you think the best thing to do about link rot is? I was curious recently and I sort of went through a lot of the Artport backlog on the Whitney to see how many of the sites were still at the URLs that they claim to be at. And a lot of them aren't. So I have, I have a list of, you know, where I've written out all the sites that don't link to where they're supposed to link anymore. You know, it's a danger for net art. What do you think the best thing to do in that situation? Do you move the piece? Do you keep it? What do you do?

[00:37:21] Shu Lea: Of course for my own work And URL I have control of, I would update it, you know, but, the whole world, the URL of the whole world is changing so much. How could you ever update all these links? Of course, sometimes for example, my film, website doesn't exist anymore, but, uh, okay, you can find it in the Wayback Machine, right? You know, again, it's just another process. Yeah, but, it's out of control, right? How are you gonna go back to all these links that you link? 

[00:37:55] Emma: Yeah, I don't know. I always wonder if, artists just move them. If, you know, say the URL is bought by somebody else, but you were putting your piece there. And then they let the domain name lapse. I always wondered if people would just put it up again at a different URL?

[00:38:08] Shu Lea: Yeah, I was thinking I should probably stop buying domain. 

I went on like a server squat to, you know, like before I really feel like all my project, I don't really want to have server or my URL. It should always squatting institutions. So brandon.guggenheim.org or whatever and then I got into a period of panic and I start buying all the domain names now. So now I've probably had like 20 domain names that I'm paying. 

[00:38:40] Emma: I do this too, I like to buy domain names that I think are funny. 

[00:38:44] Shu Lea: Yeah, so actually, you know, I think keeping up with all your domain is already one issues, right? I'm trying, you know, since I do have the whole list of the different domain on the different URL, on my website with all different project, I try to make sure they are functional.

 But, uh, it's really an issues, you know? This is another thing which museum is really collecting, actually maybe only two years ago, that the museum, the Rijksmuseum, maybe, in Netherland it's actually collecting quite serious, net art project and it's, with this woman that graduate from the Goldsmiths and, you know. So basically, there is not so much curator or collectors that's really capable of dissecting all the server issues. You know, what's the programming code or these and this is really the biggest issue I think. Even now, you know, you think about this whole NFT craziness right? I mean, how you talk about this, right? It's like you think about like blockchain, the artists have been using this, you know, for all these years, and then suddenly it's like, you know, what does it mean? You know, you throw a token onto the chain doesn't mean that, you know, everybody is just catching the trend, right? 

[00:40:12] Emma: Yeah. it's been weird. I don't know that I understand how NFTs work or maybe I do and they just still don't make sense, but it's been complicated to try to follow it.

[00:40:24] Shu Lea: Totally it doesn't make sense how everybody thinks there's such a profit to make everybody jump into it, you know, but sure. 

[00:40:36] Emma: So you're not going to be making an NFT piece anytime soon?

[00:40:41] Shu Lea: For me, it's funny. Yesterday I got a curator asking me for a site based in Russia. And so I say, so what kind of work do you want? He's like, just give me some video. And so I give him some video link and then one idea I have is some black and white video, you know? Kind of the background video for my other work and he say, oh please, no black and white. Right? Oh, okay. 

What? Well, I know. So it's like, it's quite, I still can, cannot figure out, you know, but I'll say, Okay here's my work, whatever you say you can use. You know, I'm hoping that NFT can raise money for my film, so fine. 

I think let's put it this way. The collection of installation digital work, versus the installation of net art, are actually totally different, but the question remains the same thing. Any kind of installation work electronic, digital installation work, all the net artwork, it all face the same question is that, do you want to preserve your work, in a future date, be updated by a newer interface, newer technology, newer software, right? So for example, you find the Java script instead of Java applet for Brandon project. For me, I think this is mostly like the essential question and for the archivist actually is the biggest question.

So when NYU, the Fales library pose me the question about these pills. It was the same question. They say, we really think these pills are fragile, but we think it's very interesting and educational. We want public to have access to it. At the end, I have to say yes, but I do not think, you can let the public to start, handling the pills. So then the question for them is like, yes, we are looking into how to document it or how to find different equivalent material to replace it, you know, one day, if it's all gone, uh, if those, uh, plastic, it was in the pill just melt itself away. I have another project, for example, using kind of fast paper, you know? Thermal paper. Right?

So all the images disappear also through time. So, these are always the question and for me, I am very positive and advanced person. So I always welcome a newer technology to replace it. Right. I have no problem with it. For example, Bowling Alley is written for Netscape 1.0. Uh, so how could you not update this browser, right? So I think the update of any software is fine. You know. Of course as you did in Brandon you did keep an old copy. You know, even in its nonfunctional state, it's fine. You keep this copy however, to ever make it assessable again, for any of these work, we have to reconsider which different kinds of material can be used.

In any way, it's really not a steel sculpture. You know, I think, you know, the whole history of how to restore a sculpture, restore a painting. That's different story. Right? So, for a lot of my large scale installation, I feel bad at the time that I had to destroy it. But at the same time, I feel now that the concept is there, the scheme, the technical scheme, the chart, the design, they're all there and they really can be restaged in maybe different way or updated technology. And I think this important to make these statements, for me right now. So I'm not gonna get caught by archivist telling me that they just got rotten and cannot be kept. You know, I hope one day that Fales library can go claim my computer somewhere in Germany with all my, all my project in it. 

[00:45:14] Emma: Well, we've got you on record saying that. So that counts for something.

I really enjoyed talking to you again. 

[00:45:19] Shu Lea: Great. Thank you so much I'll let you go. 

[00:45:22] Emma: Thank you.

[00:45:23] Shu Lea: Check in later then. Bye. Bye. Thanks.

[00:45:26] Ben: And as always, thank you, dear listener for joining us for this week's conversation. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. FYI Emma is available for freelance conservation work. You should definitely look them up and they're also kind of TikTok famous and make totally rad video art. You should definitely follow @__emmadickson on TikTok. And you can find the show on Twitter and Instagram @artobsolescence. 

If you like what you're hearing, I hope you'll leave a review on Apple Podcasts, it really does help other people discover the show. Before we go, just a reminder that a major mission of this podcast is to support artists that come on the show and that's something we can't do without your help. So if you're in a place to give, I hope that you'll go ahead and head over to artandobsolescence.com/donate, where you can make a tax deductible gift to support the show through the New York foundation for the arts. 

Thanks for anything you can do to help, but most of all, thank you for listening. It's been great having you here. Have a great week friends. My name is Ben Fino-Radin, and this has been Art and Obsolescence.