Self-destructive artwork, #4 (see previous)

In the 1960s, German artist Gustav Metzger pioneered the auto-destructive art movement. Here's a blurb from Gerhard Jochem:

"Metzger who first used and explained the term in his "Manifesto Auto-destructive Art" in 1960, for instance applied the technique of 'painting' with acid on nylon to create Auto-destructive Art. The premier "demonstration" of his theories "The Times" described on the occasion of a retrospective of his works at Oxford's Museum of Modern Art in 1998 as follows:

"Summoned by a green-tinted manifesto called Auto-destructive Art, a crowd assembled at the South Bank, London, on July 3, 1961. The time was 11.45 am. Three large nylon sheets, coloured white, black and red, stood flapping on a metal frame. They must have looked like an extreme assertion of abstract art at its most minimal, but Gustav Metzger regarded them more as sacrificial victims. Protected by a gasmask, he stepped forward, lifted up a spray gun and covered the sheets in hydrochloric acid. Seconds later they began to disintegrate and after 20 minutes the ragged remnants had dissolved."

In 1966 Metzger organized the international Destruction in Art Symposium (DIAS), which brought Viennese followers of Aktionismus and various artists of the Fluxus movement as well as poets, musicians and psychologists to London to create and discuss the social implications of Auto-destructive Art. The participants, among them John Lennon and Yoko Ono, also addressed recent political topics like the war in Vietnam. This attracted much attention in the press but also gave much momentum to the development of kinetic and performance art in Britain."
3:26:46 PM    

Self-destructing William Gibson novel: Agrippa. A Book of the Dead, published in 1992 on a floppy which is designed to crash after a single reading. Eventually hackers managed to pull the text off the book and put it on the net.
12:53:49 PM