As announced in 2017, Adobe will stop distributing and updating its Flash Player at the end of this year. Internet browser vendors are following suit more or less simultaneously, removing the feature with the next update.
In the 90s, Flash massively changed the appearance of home or landing pages. A Flash mania broke out, which hardly anyone could escape – even at the price of functionality. Often you had to endure a screen-filling Flash animation for minutes until you were let to the content of the page.
The Flash player was useful for playing short movies. In the early days of video streaming, nothing worked without it. YouTube was also dependent on it. Today, other technologies have long been available that are also less vulnerable than Adobe’s product, which had to be updated every few weeks for security reasons.
However, Flash was well suited for creating interactive content and for artistic applications. The latter will probably disappear forever into data nirvana.
The Berlin media artist Timo Kahlen pointed out this sad circumstance in his newsletter this week. On the occasion of the Flash shutdown on December 31, he will release 20 interactive NetArt works from 2005 to 2020 at this URL for one day before they disappear as originals forever.
Here as an example and foretaste “Drama” from 2011: and fitting to the theme: Compatible (2011).
A video recording of Timo Kahlen’s Net Art works and his latest film can be seen here: “Holding my Breath“(Vimeo).
Links:
Adobe Ankündigung; https://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/end-of-life.html#
Timo Kahlen: http://www.staubrauschen.de
Image source:
Screenshot of Flash animation introducing Attractor v5, 2Advanced.com 2008.
Browser Opt-in Adobe Flash
1 Trackback