The Impermanence Agent

The Impermanence Agent (1998 - 2002) was an electronic literature piece that provided a web agent that used each user's browsers to present a story based on that browsing.^[1] Noah Wardrip Fruin, Brion Moss, a.c. chapman, and Duane Whitehurst created this work in 1998.

Description

The agent added a small browser window to display the original story. When users browsed, the window would add details gained from each page to which the users went.^[1] However, the agent also alters the pages that the user browses. Nick Montfort gives the example that a funeral image might appear in The New York Times.^[2]

Noah Wardrip-Fruin, one of the authors, explains that "The browser is approached as a daily computer tool, in which the artwork becomes part of the daily browsing experience."^[3]

Publications, exhibitions, and education

The agent was first in the 1998 project "Omnizone: Mapping Perspectives of Digital Culture," organized by Plexus International. Later versions were published and exhibited in School of Visual Arts (SVA)'s New York Digital Salon, the New Museum's Z Media Lounge, and the Guggenheim Museum's Brave New Word.^[1]

After the initial agent was ended in 2002, a new version, The Agent's Story, was developed for the Whitney Museum's Airport.^[1] This new edition featured stories developed from featured browsers, including Stuart Moulthrop, Nick Montfort, Jullia Flanders, and Joseph Tabbi.^[4]

The work was shown at ACMSIGGRAPH.^[5]

Raine Koskimaa [fi] described ways to incorporate the Agent into digital literature studies.^[6]