External links
- "The Impermanence Agent". www.impermanenceagent.org. Retrieved 2025-07-06.
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.
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]
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 described ways to incorporate the Agent into digital literature studies. [6]
