Taxonomedia

History

The idea of Taxonomedia was born at the end of 2006. Some months later, Consuelo Rozo and myself built an independent research and creative project for the study and the dissemination of preservation, documentation and archive of media arts, aiming to open a dialogue space with other spheres of knowledge.

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We were triggered by the vast production of information that has been characterizing our times ever since, making it in many occasions impossible to access and process it. The very same information that rapidly disappears . One of the causes of dispersion and oblivion in the digital age is linked to the instability of formats and the rapid obsolescence of the means we use to store  and present that information. In this context, the media arts - informational art as Stephen Wilson would call it - is no exception. On the contrary, its specificities can be a gateway to the study of the process of memory construction and the transmission of culture in late modernity.

We’ve asked ourselves at that moment, how can we collectively develop strategies and instruments to preserve art based on unstable media? What role do materials play in shaping the memory of media arts? Who narrates the history of art and what obscured stories still need to be unearthed and disseminated?

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Given the scarcity of literature in Spanish on the preservation of media arts in mid-2000 and inspired by the need to encourage a debate on conceptual and practical alternatives to address the disappearance of our technological artistic practices, we have developed an online platform, as well as a series of pioneering meetings and activities that promote the exchange of experiences among peers.

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We understood ourselves as researchers and cultural producers in a scenario of permanent change. A change that, perhaps, was moving faster than our possibilities to catch it.

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Taxonomedia born in 2006, changed a couple of years later when it was transferred to a new virtual space and finally disappeared in a silent and quiet way, similar to the artworks and projects that it looked at. But, as also they do, Taxonomedia’s echoes and resonances continue alive in many curious and divergent modes.