The website www.antworten.de – a pioneering work of net.art, and the first Internet artwork to be sold in Germany – is transitory.

The website www.antworten.de – a pioneering work of net.art, and the first Internet artwork to be sold in Germany – is transitory. This work, conceived by Holger Friese and programmed in collaboration with Max Kossatz, could one day – when new programming standards emerge or the Internet disappears – no longer be available; data will then be lost or no longer readable with available programs.This book aims to redress the problem. In the traditional and durable form of printing, the website’s program is now published and annotated. Each image, each code from www.antworten.de is presented in digital form, as a notation of the programming sequences. Furthermore, each separate part is described so that a future programmer could reproduce the work with an identical surface. The short melody is written in notes; the colouration of the countdown digits is captured pixel for pixel.

The beautifully produced www.antworten.de is an analogue conversion of the website 'www.antworten.de' thus making the web-art of 'www.antworten.de' fully virtual for the first time. The work becomes a thought-game that (almost) anyone can reproduce. The documentation finally makes clear what constitutes this work; the focus is on the mediality and functionality of the individual parts.