David Rokeby, Very Nervous System (1983-) Documentary Collection — From the Introduction by Caitlin Jones and Lizzie Muller: [...] “This artwork is a particularly interesting case study for the Indeterminate Archive for two reasons. Firstly, it offers an unmatched demonstration of the importance of experience in media art. Very Nervous System is, as many audience members pointed out in our interviews with them, essentially an empty room until someone walks in and activates it. It is a work that is brought into being very literally through experience.

Secondly, it is a seminal work in the history of media art, with a lifespan of more than 28 years. Its celebrity and longevity pose some particularly interesting questions about documentation and contextualisation of media artworks over time and through change. The Very Nervous System’s celebrity makes it a fascinating focus from the point of view of the relationship between real and ideal. The work is, for many, one of the first successful artistic experiments in gestural, embodied interaction. An enormous number of texts have been written about it, and many curators and critics of media art have read about it without ever having experienced it themselves. This notion of an “ideal” Very Nervous System has, therefore, a powerful role within the discourse of media art. This begs the question of how the “real” individual experience of the work, here and now, relates to this powerful ideal…”