Slashdot Mirror
HTML: Is it Art?
joeljones writes "The New York Times (registration, yeah, yeah, yeah) has an interesting story about two artists who use HTML, Javascript, and other web technologies as their medium. Could be an interesting set of test cases for anyone writing a browser." While we're on the subject of artsy sites, I submit Zombo.com for your perusal. I believe it to be the only web site that claims the infinite is possible.
What did ZOMBO do to annoy CowbowNeal THAT much?
I guess anything, including code can be artistic if it blends something technical with an art in a subtle way.
That's the whole idea behind poetry, at least. And computer code can be poetic.
"Smoking helps you lose weight - one lung at a time" -- A. E. Neumann
reminds me of the internet in its infancy, where we allready had the really big button that doesn't do anything
When will I end this grieving ? When will my future begin ?
"Click here to get the plugin."
Well canvas isn't considered 'art', nor is paint. HTML is just the tool used by the artists. What they come up with can easily be considered art. Examples.
Deliberately Distorting the Digital Mechanism
.exe," said, "You think you know your computer, but really all you know is a surface on your screen." This state of affairs is based on the foolish hope that our technology, like our cars, will always operate properly, so that we never have to look at the oily, gritty bits under the hood. But Jodi subverts this notion. Visitors to the duo's Web sites, Ms. Schindler said, "immediately have the experience that Jodi wants to give them, which is, `What if everything goes wrong?' "
By MATTHEW MIRAPAUL
While tinkering recently with one of the first personal computers from the 1980's, the digital artists Joan Heemskerk and Dirk Paesmans took a look at its technical tutorial. As Mr. Paesmans recalled, the on-screen guide delivered a reassuring message: "Remember, don't be scared. You cannot do anything wrong on this computer."
Since 1994 Ms. Heemskerk and Mr. Paesmans, collaborating under the name Jodi, have created a series of Internet-based artworks that deliberately cause computers to do the wrong thing. Viewers of these online works will find their screens filled with meaningless text and needlessly blinking graphics. Web-browser windows spawn smaller windows that race maddeningly around the screen. Links that appear to lead somewhere yield dead ends. Like a sci-fi thriller, this could be delightful, except that the underlying premise is of computers in complete control. A terrifying thought.
Beginning tomorrow Jodi will be the subject of a retrospective exhibition, "install.exe," at Eyebeam, a new-media art center in Manhattan. It was organized at Plug.In, a new-media art center in Basel, Switzerland, where it was shown last fall before it traveled to Berlin. The exhibit, which runs through June 14 at Eyebeam's gallery at 540 West 21st Street, contains nearly two dozen works. Many of them can also be viewed online at www.jodi.org, asdfg.jodi.org, 404.jodi.org, wrongbrowser.com and wwwwwwwww.jodi.org.
Prepare to be disoriented, if not stuck, in a World Wide Web gone awry. The Web is less than a decade old, so it might seem premature to declare that Jodi's works are classics of Internet art. Yet these artists were probably the first to use the Internet's own visual language to create what are in effect paintings of the Internet landscape. They did so by exposing the hidden computer code that makes Web pages do what they do, then altered its odd texts and strange symbols so that they became abstract art. They also took Web features and simulated what would happen if they ran amok. For people who assume that a computer is a benign dictator, these were reminders that the slightest transgression could turn it into a deranged despot.
Like Cezanne's late works in which the raw canvas is often part of the painting, Jodi's sites force viewers to become conscious of the Web's appealing surface and the digital mechanism that lurks below.
Annette Schindler, the director of Plug.In and the co-curator of "install
In questioning the Internet's rules, Jodi has had a huge influence on digital artists.
"They are the only Internet-based artists that have created a truly new aesthetic," said the male half of the anonymous digital-art duo known as 0100101110101101.org in a recent phone call. "They have influenced almost everything on the Internet that is related to art," he said. "It's like trying to find a painter who was not influenced by Michelangelo."
Ms. Heemskerk and Mr. Paesmans were resident artists at San Jose State University in the heart of Silicon Valley in 1994, at the start of the dot-com era. One day while working on a Web project they accidentally omitted a bracket from the computer code, and the resulting Web page was a messy jumble of text and characters. They liked what they saw and began to experiment.
Mr. Paesmans said they initia
Let's temper our enthusiasm with a little art school experience.
Just like new scientific theories sometimes aren't accepted till the old scientists die off, I suspect most art professors will continue having trouble with HTML+ as art.
OK, so I'm a tad bitter. Can you tell? A sure sign of artistic success being on its way for me, no doubt.
Sure, I'll say it's art, in the same way I'll nod my head and agree when someone tries to convince me that it's a programming language. In my experience, if a person doesn't understand why HTML isn't a programming language, it's not worth my while to explain it, I'll just play along and know the truth. I recon if people start saying it's art, I'll adopt the same aproach. I'm sure there are people who'll flame me for this, but that's thier 2 cents, this, on the other hand, is mine. Mod me as a troll if you like, I just can't sell HTML as a programming language or art.
Time for a title different from web designer that implies "Someone who can put accessible information on a website".
The Virtual Bookcase: book reviews
HTML is not art!
If HTML is Art, then posting something 'Html Formatted' on Slasdhot is Art too!
fprintf(stdout, "Of course it's possible...\n"); }
Well, at least until the electricity runs out anyway. Or someone redirects stdout to /tmp. Or, or...
Well, it's nice theory anyway.
Cheers,
Ian
No. Is a pen or a pencil art? No.
HTML is a Hypertext Markup Language. :-)
zWhat would an EWOULDBLOCK block, if an EWOULDBLOCK could block would? -- me
You, given that you are reading his website. How many hits does your website get? Dumbass.
Look at that poll on perlmonks.org! It's miles above the polls here at slashdot. What would it take to get such polls here?
I remember very similar pictures when my zx-spectrum hanged...:)
Maybe someday BSOD will be considered as an art?
to me art = communication,
just often experimental and two-way in what's usually seen one-way; i.e. painting. (because the viewer acts, sometime with WTF?! which is perfectly fine, artist may not care what message is seen as anyway)
got any impressive links for me?
A blog I run for the wealth
Future artists are advised to take a look at This Site for direction... Enjoy.
I'm not Seth.
Nytimes.com is freaking out on me... did we actually slashdot the new york times? It said something about server errors and now i'm getting garbled pages and broken pages.
using namespace slashdot;
troll::post();
is it just me or does anyone else remember this story from a long time ago?
Jeez, all these people complaining about the subject line. Are Slashdotters now so lazy that they don't even read the summary anymore? I thought it was bad enough having to say RTFA.
The article refrences a site that is something between a crackers object of desire and an annoying javascript experiment gone wrong.
http://0100101110101101.org/
How about an example of "why HTML could be considered to be art" which actually uses some HTML?
zomba.com only uses it to embed a flash movie - "Click here to get the plugin". This one belongs in the "post-html" gallery.
Sorry, I meant This Site instead. The first link contains alot of crap.
'Webpages that suck' Shows that webpages CAN be art - bad art.
I'm not Seth.
I wonder if the guy got tired of reading "Welcome to Zombo-com" in various voices...
- WrexSoul
\/.
vvv
Just in the same way that you can take a piece of paper and paint a masterpiece onto it, or you can print a pizza leaflet onto it. The existence of pizza leaflets doesn't mean that paper can never be used for art. Jolyon
Please read my Canon EOS tech blog at http://www.everyothershot.com
Is this a joke? I just get some flashing blobs and nothing happens. Am I missing something?
I still prefer old school. ASCII as Art.
The Female Form
Cinema
www.bannination.com Two things float to the top he
This sounds like a spin-off from the controversial, and old, topic: "Is computer generated/enhanced art, real art?"
You need to get some sound dude...it came out in the eighties...man...you're way behind.
You're missing the sound!
(sorry for double post, should have previewed first, here they are linked)
http://www.once-upon-a-forest.com/
http://www.snarg.net/
http://www.entropy8zuper.org/
http://www.redsmoke.com/
http://www.absurd.org/
http://www.fakeshop.com/
http://snudd.sil.at/
http://www.jodi.org/
http://www.superbad.com/
http://www.d2b.org/
http://www.silverserver.co.at/lia/
-Rabbit
A more useless site I have never seen.
I am from Denmark as well.
Christian Lemmerz is the guy who did the dead pigs. I forgot what the other guy was called.
Anyway, calling somebody a moron simply because you do not believe something to be art is a pretty cheap ad hominem. It's art because some people think it is. And he's not the only one to think of it as art, I reckon it's art as well.
The piece in question (with the dead pigs), called 'Scene', was about decay and the temporarity of life. Sure, the pigs are not art, but neither is a canvas and a bucket of paint. I personally find pieces like these very interesting. I really liked his Todesfigur and Gebeine.
But I digress, my point is, you can always find someone who don't think that a particular piece is art, so you can't write something off as not-art just because you think it's disgusting/irrelevant/stupid/insert term here.
Check out Dadaism, found art, and other kinds of offstream ways of expression.
There's a frequent poster here (forgot who) that has superbad as his website URL. I kinda like it. Infinite clicks. Good with a beer om a late lonesome friday night.
The Bigger The Headache The Bigger the Pill
Can I borrow your aesthetics and ethics meter?
That objective absolute scale that you found, where did you find it?
The point I am really trying to make is better explained by the following neo-constructivist abstract post modernist expresion: bullshit.
Have a nice day.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I know this is almost off topic..
But this was kinda freaky at first..
Start playing:
Space Manoevres - Stage One
by Sasha & Digweed
And then goto Zombo.com.
If you don't have it, well it's free on some Internet radio sites. (free to listen anyway)
Checkout www.thebestdesigns.com for some of the latest web art - ok so a lot of it is Flash based but there's some cool html/js stuff there too.
There are far, far more artistic sites then zombo.com. Geez.
Honestly I don't even see why this is a question, Certanly page layout on paper is art, why wouldn't it be so on the web? There are lots of beautiful sites out there, both informative, and simply done to be pretty.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
As for html being used in art, that's what the second show at http://art.by.arena.ne.jp/ (1995) was all about. Plus some art shows have featured websites as part of their exhibitions for a while - nothing major that i can think of, but groups like http://entity.ummu.umich.edu/. Then there were (are? can't find link) the minimalist competitions - designing in under 5k pages - and the like. If you want pictures made from html then maybe my http://www.blackant.net/code/oth/img-html-src.html will suffice.
I'm sure i'm missing plenty of other sites and competitions but it's only 7am in my TZ.
-f
www.blackant.net
I would suggest http://www.themanwhofellasleep.com
Kind of abstract, but very good.
I honestly don't understand why people assign so much value to calling something art. It's as if calling something art assigns it to a higher plane where it can't be questioned.
I guess I wasn't all that impressed by the sites mentioned in the NYT article. IMO superbad.com is far more cool than the jodi sites. Futhermore superbad has been around for years, so I don't see how these people have created anything all that original or special. For those of you who don't know, superbad is a... surrealistic website where you don't really feel in control of the website since it's never really very apparent just how each page works. I'm sure there's many other people that've created strange websites like this as well.
As far as the "you're not in control of your computer" theme goes, there's lots of sites (mostly porn) that have all kinds of annoying javascript tricks to open up new windows when you try to kill the old window. Seems like that's the same idea as this. Sure, I guess the sites the NYT talks about are "art", but so is the tracing of my hand I did when I was 5. I think the NYT has missed the boat on this one, and perhaps should have done a bit more homework on what other people have done in this field.
AccountKiller
"Everybody is an artist these days. Rock and roll singers are artists. So are movie directors, performance artists, make-up artists, tattoo artists, con artists, and rap artists. Movie stars are artists. Madonna is an artist, because she explores her own sexuality. Snoop Doggy Dogg is an artist because he explores other people's sexuality. Victims who express their pain are artists. So are guys in prison who express themselves on shirt cardboard. Even consumers are artists when they express themselves in their selections of commodities. The only people left in America who seem not to be artists are illustrators."
-Brad Holland, illustrator
I guess nobody has a real job anymore...
If someone can call the Virgin Mary covered in elephant shit 'art', I don't see any reason why HTML can't be.
There's a Mercedes gap too. I want one and can't afford one, but it's not government's job to do anything about it.
Any method used by humans to express themselves can be a vehicle for art. How good that method is for conveying artistic talent is another matter entirely.
it's Fabergé
but what do i know, i'm just a model.
eBayMy about me page is a very good example. My eBay auction pages are simple with concise terms and instructions and ALWAYS a picture. I have nicely formatted paragraphs but not a fancy layout. I have my terms in diferent colors and not in some oversized font like I've been cheated a 1000 times. I accept common payment types and even uncoventional ones. It's my widespread "look and my "here for the long haul" look" that I think gets me biz.
I find places like Amazon very busy on their page, so I have a hard time buying from there, even if there's a good deal. Websites with a billion ads are a complete turnoff.
My home page ADZOOX while not perfect and being a work in progress is being layed out artiscally. I'm doing it all by hand (as I have my eBay ME page) - I think sites with a personal/photorealistic touch like also "get sales" just based on the professional look.
Anyone can program HTML and any good graphic artist can layout an illustration or magazine and a good writer can lay out a nice blog, it's the art of salesmanship (even if you're not selling product, but selling idea) that matters.
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
Something that has always fascinated me - can ayone provide a definition of "art". I mean the type of art that hangs in galleries and modern art museums and people argue endlessly about whether it really is art or is just plain stupid. The type of art that this is trying to classify HTML under?
The best one I've found is "the products of human creativity", but that still seems way too broad. Personally I feel that art should have no functional purpose, so something that has a purpose (a building say) can be beautiful, but I don't think it is art.
"Because it's there." - George Mallory, when asked why he wanted to climb Mt Everest, March 18, 1923 (New York Times)
I hope they don't include an infinite number of concurrent HTTP connections in that statement!
I now think that ZOMBO.com sucked an IQ point or three from me sitting there waiting to see if he'd say anything different... sheesh.
---
Posted by CowboyNeal on Friday April 25, @05:01
from the cool-online-art-besides-superbad dept.
While we're on the subject of artsy sites, I submit Zombo.com for your perusal. I believe it to be the only web site that claims the infinite is possible.
"I'm not ashamed I can't function in society like I'm supposed to." - Paul Westerberg
http://www.tehgordon.org
TEH GORDON!
Of course it's art, as is every other program and data set ever produced! I wanted to do an Art installation which started with a copy of the printed code and moving on to the running application on a computer.
There was an unknown error in the submission.
...Rats,
;)
I didn't do anything!!!
Well, the problem with "art" is that it's notoriously difficult to define.
Let's try something else - can we prove that code can be poetry?
Poetry also tends to avoid definition; however, I think the best definition I've heard is that poetry is succinct use of language.
Since, say, C++ affords an enormous economy of expression, and a vast number of ways to accomplish a given task, then performing a given task in an elegant, succint way is surely perfectly valid poetry.
You can also argue the case with dictionary.com's definition of poetry: "a quality that suggests poetry, as in grace, beauty, or harmony: the poetry of the dancer's movements."
coldcity
code, life, art
Might I recommend Absurd.org? Unfortunately he removed the old stuff, but there's still a mess of bizarre and interesting things there. With a bunch of javascript.
But considering what is considerd modern art, anything passes as art.
One need only to look at the new Saatchi Museum to realize that.
Only if art is lucrative. You need more "I'd buy that for a dollar" trolls, and they'd have to follow through
You think that I'm crazy, you should see this guy!
So I waited. And waited. And waited some more. Finally I was rewarded, with nothing. Zombo eventually shuts up and dies. They could have at least looped the recording or something.
I have a lot of time on my hands.
A canvas with stuff on it is called a painting.
An html page that's been filled out is called...an html page.
Since we use the same word for the medium as we do for the finished work, HTML is art if the finished work is art.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
The artist makes the medium viable for art, not the other way around. If you can make something creative with popsicle sticks and glue, then that's art. It's the same with anything.
OddManIn: A Game of guns and game theory.
Don't stare at the dots. It's a DARPA conspiracy. I can't tell you any more, but it has something to do with Al Gore being on the Apple board.
The NYTimes article seems to be mostly based on the Jodi project. While I've been disappointed that the site itself has been mostly stagnant these last few years (http://map.jodi.org is mostly a collection of dead links now eg., although it has its charms), the way they are taking their work outside the internet, with such exhibitions all around the world is probably the main thing in this article.
Some people have already pointed out that HTML is not art, just a medium to create art, but the important thing here is that by taking their project outside the internet, the jodi team are showing to the world that HTML can create art indeed.
Nearly all of them fail. Those who don't fail to make it visually appealing fail to make it cross-browser and accessible/usable.
I like superbad. However it is not infinite clicks as you mention. I recall a page that has links to all the others on the site. Oh, and it's worth checking the source of some pages for additional comments.
I actually have a show going up on tuesday for my senior portfolio, demonstrating how computer images and code can be art... it's on my website.
stuff |
...once I met someone whop told me that Java is much better than C. I had a look at his code. It looked like ART. And it didn't work.
In any rate it's definately prior art, in case you were getting any ideas!
"Oooh, does that mean we get to kick some puffy white mad zionist butt?"
The following only applies when applied to Internet Exploder.
All other browsers will find it lame.
Did no one else try that? the NYTimes article points to http://0100101110101101.org/, which annoyed me right away with it's javascript alert popup, and then I just threw it into HEX, and the numbers changed into 4BAD...I wonder what the means. There is no 4BAD website, perhaps it's just a complete coinscidense (sp).
:)
anyway, the site is rather interesting, though I haven't figured out what it is. On could probably spend hours going through all of the "private" email on that computer...
As for ZOMBO, I have no idea what anyone is talking about, I don't have flash installed (probably for this reason)
"Time is long and life is short, so begin to live while you still can." -EV
The following only applies when applied to Internet Exploder.
<html>
<form>
<input type crash>
</form>
</html>
All other browsers will find it lame.
It wasn't meant like that. I consider my capacity for empathy at least above average, and as such I'm not quick to judge. It was meant in an ironic sence.
You as well as the artists in question are entirely entitled to your oppinions and I truly respect that. See I can't be nice. :-)
zWhat would an EWOULDBLOCK block, if an EWOULDBLOCK could block would? -- me
http://www.waitallday.com
goto wwwwwwwww.jodi.org and view the source. thier html art is really just ascii art. so, which is it? html art or ascii?
btw, the ascii pic is a bomb... kind of a strange source for art
now, if HTML had some decent layout controls, maybe...
But it would never dare do such a thing
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
Don't just go to http://jodi.org
:(
your screen will run amouck with javascript created windows - well if you're on windows using IE, that's all they give us at work
I honestly don't understand why people assign so much value to calling something art. It's as if calling something art assigns it to a higher plane where it can't be questioned.
Maybe becasue of art patents/copyrights ?
.ACMD setaloiv siht gnidaeR
Is a pencil and Paper art?
Is bronze art?
Is a canvas, oil, and a brush art?
Is your power tool and a lumber a house?
It is sometimes advisable not to confuse tools with the results they may bring.
Art is more about the final product than how it is built. Its what it does that matters not How its done.
It isn't
What's not to be worried about? Everything!
Of course, the network went down the other day, and I was rendered useless for a day, but still...
"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one " -Albert Einstein
http://hell.com has always been my favorite. the guestlist has been stagnant lately but the exibitions that go up are pure html driven art.
I remember 4 years ago or so if you followed their doublespeak links to the end of the line it would begin to throw up browser windows faster than you could close them until your entire system ground to a halt and invariably crashed (this is in the win95/netscape 3 days). I still remember where I was and what paper I was working on the first time that happened.
---- The real Slashdot is still here. You just have to browse at -1 to read the comments.
Esp. with HTML, are they saying the .html file is art? No. It's not art until it a gets read by a browser then get viewed by a person. The chemical structure of a pigment is not art either until someone or something else processes it.
I think people tend to classify stuff to quickly. I think something needs to float around in the public for a while before you go and give it the title Art.
I don't want to sound like a troll, thats just my take on it.
500 dollar reward for tip(s) leading to the arrest of the person(s) who stole my sig.
As the "human effort to imitate, supplement, alter, or counteract the work of nature", I would say that HTML is not art; designing web sites has little to do with imitating nature, though some existential definition of nature could include anything man has ever developed to be a part of nature...
As the "conscious production or arrangement of sounds, colors, forms, movements, or other elements in a manner that affects the sense of beauty", HTML(or web design in general) is certainly art, which I think should be obvious to just about everyone.
Art, to me, is expression exposed to the senses. HTML is only the structure of the web page, but as it allows extensive creativity and certainly exposes a variety of potential sensory stimulations on a computer screen, utilizing HTML is certainly art in my opinion.
Any objections?
superbad
My all time favorite art site is: here What's yours?
Cheers, Michael From sunny Toronto
WOW, ZOMBOCOM MADE IT TO SLASH DOT!
Awesome, In honor of this great event, you should check out my PSO (phantasy star online) fan art of my human hunter character 20m80c0m. Level 50, oh yeah.
http://artattack.to/display.php?art=1000007447
--blaine
Wood is not art. Paint is not art. Iron is not art. String is not art. HTML is not art.
What someone produces after deliberately arranging them in a design intended to provoke a reaction... that product is art. (I'm not arguing good versus bad. I'm just saying that it's art.)
Can I change my /. userid to 1001110011100011.tv please?
Thanks,
jodeci
Head over to netdiver and you'll see dozens of artists who use HTML, Javascript, etc. as their medium and have done so for years.
Perhaps back in 1998, this was a new art form. Today, there are more "my site is my art" web sites than you can shake a stick at.
Your fantasies contain the seeds of important concepts.
The 5k competition you mention is, uh, the the 5k. A few months ago, the organizers turned over the reigns to a Yahoo group.
Hey, as long as they would use just HTML and JavaScript as their materials, they would at least release the source along with the rendered images. How many artists do THAT?
Alas, they do appear to use a lot of GIF stored imagery where it might have been SVG!
JeR
Some guy is making jewelery out of cow dung. Technically, it really is jewelery. But will anyone wear it?
love is just extroverted narcissism
Actually, the trolls seem to be disappearing. I've seen several stories with only a couple of halfhearted trolls. C'mon, people, where are the stories from alt.sex.bitten-off? ASCII goatse?
Are the trolls getting lazy? Have they given up???
http://art.teleportacia.orgc ia.org -> go to Agatha appears
http://www.teleporta
Lovely!
Maybe someday someone might use HTML to come up with something interesting, on the lines ofor maybe a haiku using just HTML or XML tags.
Is that art? I dunno. Je ne suis pas une artiste.
It's definetly an art to try to make html layout look consistent in all browsers.
the most over used word in the English language. Ever seen any of Jackson Pollock's stuff? Then you know what I mean. Abstract Expressionism is a politically correct way to say "I can't draw/paint so I slapped some crap on the canvas and voila."
old fucking news.
(about 10 years old)
Everyone wants their job to be called "art" because that implies there's a higher purpose to it than making some rich motherfucker richer.
I program. It makes the shareholders money. I have no delusions of grandeur.
I go home and write fiction or play music. That is the pursuit of an art.
is frickin retarded. every GOOD web page made could be considered art of a type, the only problem for these people is that their page isnt good. in fact, its lame. its so irritating to see people oooo and ahhh over retarded stuff....
-MR. doesnt feel like registering
Are Cliparts art ?
--- Back to the trees, back to the trees !
Don't click here Is it art if it makes you laugh and nauseous at the same time? I expect Salvidor Dali and Picasso thought so.
This Alien Shore by CS Friedman, featured a lot of stuff about code as art, including the interesting idea of "charting a program" to see if it made a "pretty picture".
I think there may have been some similar concepts in "Crytonomicon", and definitely "Snow Crash" by Neal Stephenson.
BTW my very first instructions for a computer were pencil on something that looked like a punched card but used pencil marks instead of punch holes, to generate calendars with ascii art pictures. We all wanted the picture of the horse, but mostly we got wizard of id, or Einstein. Ie the picture was selected randomly or sequentially or something but we didn't get to choose it.
And I'd been playing with the shapes you could make out of lcd numbers on calculators before that. 3838383;8383838 then x / y them etc.
I always seek "elegance" in mathematical equations and programming code, but I'm not sure that makes it "art".
-- it must be true, it's on the internet.
I work at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis in the New Media dept, the largest of any museum in the country. We're responsible for all the digital artwork here, including "net.art".
This is certainly not "news" since net.art has been around for well over 8 years now. jodi.org and 01.org (meantioned in the article) could probably be considered the "grandfathers" of net.art, though I suppose there could be some debate on that, depending on whom you talk to.
And while it's been around for a while it's only been in the last few years that more museums have been taking it seriously. The Walker, the Whitney and the SF MOMA are the big three that come to mind when thinking about museums with a large new media collections. More and more museums are understanding the significance of it as well.
And just with any digital medium there are some ethical questions when it comes to the artwork, such as copyright, and if it's ok to make digital copies of artwork, or does that dilute it? How many is too many? Some artwork is based off of other artwork, so it is ok to "steal" (copy) someone else's work (art or not) to make into my own art? There are parallels here with traditional artwork (like found object art), but also issues that are specific to this medium as well.
Then there's the issue of archiving. If a project runs off a DB and is only usable in Netscape 4, how do we archive it so that in 50 years we can view it? Do we archive just the software? What if future hardware can't run it? Do we archive the hardware as well? What if it relies on some form of online connection, but that online setup changes in the future (think security, etc) so that it cannot be reproduced 100 years from now? Have we then lost this piece forever? Obvioulsy there are a lot of questions that need to be answered in this area.
I think the real question though isn't "is it art", the question is how much impact will it have in the future. When Picaso made his paintings some people said he was crazy, or didn't think it was art, but in hindsight we know the outcome. The same is true for art in new media. Only time will really tell how much lasting impact it has on the way we think and approach art.
Did the poster of this story bother to read the HTML before deciding it was art?
Artists have been producing works on non-traditional mediums for the past century. I guess to show us in their condescending, I'm-better-than-you-because-I-am-an-artist way that art is everywhere. So why not HTML, or hey, what about flash?
It's something like the fun I used to have with combining RND with PRINT, DRAW etc. in BASIC many years ago. The official word for what was produced is "Squidge".
:-)
Anyway, this is not art in the traditional sense but in my opinion nor is drawing a few coloured squares and lines on canvas and displaying it in a museum. This hasn't stopped those people from making thousands out of it, however. I actually prefer the HTML art to the canvas stuff.
The random characters that my 5 month old types into our home computer isn't art in the traditional sense either. This hasn't stopped me from carefully preserving each of them and proudly showing them to anyone who's willing to look
Comment removed based on user account deletion
enlightenment <sp>
(duh!)
gimmefonts.com
404 arcade
slax0rnet
another personal site
designpicks
of course, there are many others. these took imagination, enginuity and an eye for artistic quality. Art is quite simple something that contains beauty and is appealing to the eye - in such a respect, anything could be considered art.
Hell, people make ASCII pictures, is that not art? Ask a good C programmer about the last personal project he did. Ask him if he doesn't consider it a work of art as well.
It's amazing that you people even need to ask this question. Art is not about the tools that get used to create the outcome, it's about the outcome. A painter's brush isn't art, but the painting is.
Seems to me like these two have just found a clever way of turning a vast quantity of ineptitude with programming into a marketable talent. "Its not random garbage - its art, if you don't see that then its your own fault for not thinking about it in the right way." This is the slogan of much of the "avant garde" for the last half century or more. My question is how is anything that works on that premise really art and not just a scam for the gullible? "This special snake oil will aleviate headaches, bring rain to your crops and cure gout, promise. If it fails, then you obviously weren't using it correctly." Really, anybody with a half hour to go over an online manual on html and javascript can create pages full of random crap - the artisitic skill is in getting paid for it and filling galleries with it. Perhaps we've just left the "scam" out of their title of "artists".
There are a thousand forms of subversion, but few can equal the convenience and immediacy of a cream pie -Noel Godin
Is Zombo.com really supposed to be that boring, or was it slashdotted?
For those of who were priveledged enough, we found out about hell.com a long time ago. I think I'm not supposed to talk about it, and I know I'm not supposed to link to it. But look what that did for fight club. At any rate, hell.com is supposed to be defunct, replaced by no-such.com. I don't know why. Probably something about money. Hell.com (where I found out about jodi, among other things such as intropy8zuper.com and the sites that sprung those) has been supporting "HTML" Art (I'd rather call it web based art) community for years. I think I signed up on their mailing list in '98, and they were around a while before. Anyone interested in this form of art should check out hell.com or no-such.com. People are doing a lot of eccentric stuff with browsers.
The New York Times (registration, yeah, yeah, yeah)
And this is Slashdot, where people don't like anti-privacy things such as having to log in. Not even the editors.
Gotta love the hypocrisy around here.
I pledge allegiance to the flag...
of the Corporate States of America...
The works by jodi is one of the products / byproducts of "new media art" of the nineties. Art that was once considered "new media art", at this point in time is no longer new. The new media era is over. Yes, there will always be "new" media art but never again "new media art."
We are now in a post new media era, an era occuring after the New Media era. A return to creating art not for the sake of New Media, not for the sake of art, but for the sake of critiquing and analyzing culture and society.
Further, the era is catagorized by regurgitation and incorporation of avant garde "New Media" practices and works into the mainstream and mainstream thought processes, thus making the avant garde practices and works no longer avant garde.
The works by jodi is one of the products / byproducts of "new media art" of the nineties. Art that was once considered "new media art", at this point in time is no longer new. The new media era is over. Yes, there will always be "new" media art but never again "new media art." We are now in a post new media era, an era occuring after the New Media era. A return to creating art not for the sake of New Media, not for the sake of art, but for the sake of critiquing and analyzing culture and society. Further, the era is catagorized by regurgitation and incorporation of avant garde "New Media" practices and works into the mainstream and mainstream thought processes, thus making the avant garde practices and works are no longer avant garde.
He presumes we narrow down humanity's basic drives to survival and reproduction. (I'm paraphrasing, here) Then, anything which we create or do which is not a direct result of these basic drives, what can it be, but art? From drawing in the dirt to flipping someone off: Art.
I'm not saying I share that idea completely, but it has its appeal.
philcrissman.com.
Paint: Is it art?
"You know, Hobbes, some days even my lucky rocketship underpants don't help" -- Calvin
Correct me if I'm wrong, but this article appears to be concerned not with HTML as an art form, but with computer art and websites as art form. If it was actually about HTML, there would be lots more discussion of code, table layouts, scripting and interactivity, and the like.
I put the "wry" in "riot."
That was some funny stuff. Nice waste of 10 mins.
Anyone know anymore like Zombo Com?
This is most definitely NOT a question that comes up only in the visual arts. Questioning the borders of "music" and "non-music" is another horse that's been beaten well past death (Stockhausen is not the bleeding edge of modern music).
There's a well-known composition by John Cage, called 5:33 (five minutes and 33 seconds), composed entirely of rests. Conveniently, it can be performed on any instrument; the performer just sits down at the piano (for example), wipes off the keys, and sits there. At the end of 5:33, they get up and bow.
There's another composition where the audience is asked to bring along as many mechanical metronomes as possible. They're all set up on stage and started, and the piece is over when the last one finally winds down and stops.
There are some Pauline Oliveros works that I think are kind of neat, that involve audience participation. One example: there are no on-stage performers; instead, the audience is instructed to listen until they hear any pitch (a hum from the ventilation system, a chair squeak, whatever), then they should hum that pitch (which of course sets off a chain reaction). Then find a new pitch in the din, and hum that.
The list goes on...
Anyway, I think I'd also disagree that art must have no utility. For one thing, art has an effect on you (i.e., it might make you laugh, or freak you out, or introduce your mind to new ways of looking at the world around you, etc.). If I gain the optimism to face the day by looking at a painting in my kitchen every morning, is that less "utile" than a backscratcher?
Religious-themed art by El Greco, Rafeal, Michaelangelo, etc. was intended (in part) to help viewers understand various religious stories at a more visceral level. Are these "crafts" because they served a purpose?
Hey, I don't know what the hell "art" is, but I would agree with you that using online media won't disqualify anyone.
Just my 10 cents.
There are only 10 types of people: those who understand decimal, those who don't, and, uh, 8 other types I forget.
I believe it to be the only web site that claims the infinite is possible.
I dunno. Is WorldCom's budget for the last few years on the web anywhere?
That is the *accursed share* identified by George Bataille. The always available surfeit of energy we devote to ritualized waste. The sovereign nonsense that gives meaning to our mundane existence.
illegitimii non ingravare
does it censor art?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I've always been quite a fan of Superbad.
First. I haven't seen those piles of fat, but I (try hard not to) imagine they might have been ugly. But who says ugly can't be esthetic? Ugly is an esthetic category just like beautiful. Take, for instance, Baudelaire's poems - one is about a rotten corpse. A rotten corpse isn't a pleasant thing to look at at all, but I really like that poem.
Second. Abstract art doesn't necessarily mean cow corpses or whatever (I've seen it called protest-art). Think of abstract paintings. The day before yesterday, I was reading (quite incidentally) an art book in a book shop, when an abstract painting caught my eye. It was just some criss-crossing black stripes (a black and white repro of the painting...), but it felt (I can't say "looked", because there was not too much to look at) so fucking beautiful... It definately had esthetics.
This experience made me completely dump my previous attitude of abstract art as "the artist trying to show how she would paint if she could paint". Screw the pragmatic logic, says me (depressed and tired).
Hell is not other people; it is yourself. - Ludwig Wittgenstein
That's because calling something art... assigns it to a higher plane where it can't be questioned. "...What are you talking about? It IS art, it must be, because HE went to an academy and got his diploma so he must know what art is, whereas YOU are only an ordinary person who knows nothing about art. For Christ's sake, even I see it's art, although I don't understand it..." etc. It's like sticking a sign that says "This is an orange" on an apple and then insisting that it must be an apple, because it's been written.
Enough of cynicism, but. Art is what you think it is, I think.
Hell is not other people; it is yourself. - Ludwig Wittgenstein
And if your stuck on that "bad behavior isn't rewarded crap", then next time you won't get a second chance!
Any random garbage isn't art. I think (and I hope) I'm not overgeneralizing, if I say, that only mediocre artists say so - as an excuse for them being so bad. And not only the artists (""), but also the people who think that anyone who has graduated art school (or whatever) is automatically an artist. Sure, sometimes you really do need to have some background information to truly understand a work of art (or a book or a film or a song...), but "you just don't understand it because you don't have the education" is not an excuse in my opinion. I've seen paintings that look like just some random brushstrokes, but make me feel like I was listening to really really good music. And then there are others that ARE just random brushstrokes - "avant garde", but not art, at least not for me. (NO, I'm not even close to being an expert...)
Of course it could be, that all those so-called art people are just trying to fuck everybody's brains with their abstract art and avant garde music (made with chainsaws, hammmers etc) so that they could rule the world. In that case, I'm doomed (listening to Einstürzende Neubauten is to be blamed)
PS. For the n-th time today, I apologize for sounding bitter and cynical. It hasn't been a good week for me. Sorry.
Hell is not other people; it is yourself. - Ludwig Wittgenstein
There are two parts to the question of whether HTML/JavaScript can be considered art:
1) Whether the end product can be considered 'art' when viewing it in a web browser,
2) Whether the source code can be considered 'art' when viewing it in a text editor.
More people would agree that the end product is art. Granted, HTML/JavaScript are not efficient tools for creating a painting, but they can arrange/create eye candy. Does this mean crap site designs/implementations are just art that we don't 'appreciate'? In my opinion yes and no. Whilst art is subjective, creating a user interface using such technologies has a lot of objectivity to it... there are many things that should not be done, and code needs to be done in a certain way.
This brings me to the question of whether the code may be considered art. I think to some extent it is. It might not be pretty to someone who hasn't seen HTML/JavaScript before.
As a web developer myself, I think code is artistic. Whilst a traditional artist must have 'fine honed' their skills in order to scuplt, paint, etc. using brushes, strokes, chisels and other tools, so does a web developer. Their skills must be good too.
How you may ask? As with other programming languages, there are coding styles, standards, best practices (like how readable it is). Redundant tags (like poor use of tables to present non-tabular information) should be avoided. I like to put new opening/closing tags on new lines, I like to indent child/nested tags by one tab (within reason of course).
Personally, I think I have made good code when the HTML/XHTML/CSS is validated, when the code has good layout and is readable, and when the parsed version in a web bowser looks good too. Not just in one web browser, but all of the target browsers.
I understand that looking at code is not the same on the eyes as looking at a painting or a sculpture, but it is quite similar on the brain. A sense of anger, pleasure, confort, bewilderment, pride, disappointment, interest, etc. are possible - possibly not to art critics but 'code critics'.
Patents? Doubt it. I think this is more in the relm of elitism....As in "I'm and artist....You fool. You could never understand the deeper meaning and genius of my work!"
Declaring ownership of a vast-artistic-internet-influence is typically pompous of such "artists".
How many javascripters out there havn't already written much more interesting stuff than what's at these places?
Here is some HTML Art:
1
2
Of course I think Zombo would go better with the kind of cone favoured by Bob Marley and the lyrcists for Cypress Hill. Or maybe with an Amsterdam chocolate mud cake for those who don't like to inhale.
Ie if you can get your stuff or shit or whatever into a gallery and get people to pay for it, photograph it, or put it into the evening news, then you're doing well.
It is better if the art is a little bit durable but it doesn't seem to matter necessarily.
The tricky thing is knowing when you are doing something new or just rehashing something that's been done and presented as "art" before.
Mostly it is marketing.
I quite like Blue Poles (Pollock) which is just as well cos we paid a lot of money for it. Strangely, based on what his other stuff is going for at the moment, we've made quite a good investment. It may also mean that other people like it or think it is good art. I like that art is controversial, ie whether or not something is art makes for thought, debate and discussion. BTW the painting itself is a bitch to move around because it seems to be made of some stuff that has the flexibility of frozen glass so if the canvas gets the slightest bend in it, all the paint cracks off.
-- it must be true, it's on the internet.
Exactly. It seems like we really should be posing the question, is jodi.com art? Which is, essentially the question, is abstract expressionism art? This is a question we humans have been asking ever since the first person got pissed off that Jackson Pollock made some money for doing what they believed a child could do. But, here's my question, when a 3 year old sits down in a moment of inspiration and paints a few lines across a piece of paper in a surprisingly beautiful way and calls it "3 birds," how is that not art? And if it's not art, what is it?
There was a response I believe to "oh my god" that said something to the effect that abstract art is for people who can't draw or paint. That is a horrific misunderstanding. Most abstract artists I know, including myself, could draw or paint if we wanted to. It is a matter of choice.
Maybe a child's art is art because the child can't do any "better." And maybe Pollock's paintings are not art because he could/should have just learned to paint in a representational manner.
Abstract Expressionism expresses a moment where words cannot, a feeling where there is no form. How would you paint a feeling? You can paint a look on someone's face or you can paint the color that person feels. It is not much different from improvisational jazz. Or, is that not music? I guess some would argue, no.
Anyway, in an answer to the question, is jodi.com art? I would say yes, but it's bad and pretty annoying like a trumpet player playing a high pitched sound non-stop until you shut him or her up or leave the room.
But, again, if it's not art, what is it?
Is everyone here afraid to admit that this crap is really stupid? I mean, the "really big button that does nothing at all" cleverly sums up in one click what you'll find in a million clicks with crap like this "html art" or whatever you want to call it.
It seems like most people, when someone throws the word "art" into the mix, kind of step back and think, "Hmm, if I can't see the 'art' I must be stupid." Consider the possibility that this kind of crap is just plain old stupid.