File:The great URL stone.jpeg

English: The URL Stone, is an artwork made by Egor Kraft. It is represented via a marble stone and it’s photo stored in the Wikipedia Media Storage. The work aims to study the various properties and longevity of media carriers that we assign the function of storing, transmitting and preserving knowledge, data and information in general. The investigation will juxtapose the same information being held/transmitted by two mediums, which have fundamentally different properties. The mediums include: firstly a text carved into stone in an archaic way, in accordance to how knowledge used to be preserved by ancient civilisations and secondly an encyclopaedic article posted on Wikipedia, perhaps now the most common and progressive method of documenting and gaining knowledge to date.

The text carved onto a marble plaque includes a url address, that refers to an image of this particular marble plaque which is located within the Wikipedia media storage (Wikipedia Commons), followed by the Wikipedia article. The article contains detailed information about the purpose & creation of the marble plaque as well as its current location and condition, available for updating by the current holder of the plaque or any other Wiki user, in accordance with the democratic idea underlying the ideological principles of the site.

The project is not complete until one of these two forms of media no longer refers to the other – the link is lost or ceases to exist, thus losing its durable qualities in site of the other. Which one will be lost first? Only time will tell...