In 1992, William Gibson released "Agrippa (A Book of the Dead)", a haunting poem about loss and memory that came on a floppy disc that erased itself as you played it.
Source: original 1992 Agrippa 3.5″ diskette, 1.4 Mb, loaned by collector Allan Chasanoff.
Process: » Disk image (bit-level copy) made using the “dd” copy process. (See Item #D50 on this site: downloadable disk-image file.) » Run of the disk-image copy on a computer using Mini vMac emulator with System 7 book disk (to emulate the functions of the original 1992 Mac platform for which the software on the diskette was created). » Video capture of the resulting run of the poem.
More info: Matthew G. Kirschenbaum, with Doug Reside and Alan Liu, “No Round Trip: Two New Primary Sources for Agrippa.”
READ 0809:
(PDF) Encouraging Witting Participation and Performance in Digital Live Art | © Jennifer G. Sheridan, Nick Bryan-Kinns, Alice Bayliss, 2007 Published by the British Computer Society People and Computers XXI – HCI… but not as we know it: Proceedings of HCI 2007 Linden J. Ball, M. Angela Sasse, Corina Sas, Thomas C. Ormerod, Alan Dix, Peter Bagnall, and Tom McEwan (Editors) | "We describe a framework for characterizing people’s behavior with Digital Live Art. Our framework considers people’s wittingness, technical skill, and interpretive abilities in relation to the performance frame. Three key categories of behavior with respect to the performance frame are proposed: performing, participating, and spectating. We exemplify the use of our framework by characterizing people’s interaction with a DLA - iPoi. This DLA is based on the ancient Maori art form of poi and employs a wireless, peer-to-peer exertion interface. The design goal of iPoi is to draw people into the performance frame and support transitions from audience to participant and on to performer. We reflect on iPoi in a public performance and outline its key design features."