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.
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
Wow! I forgot all about that site. Years ago I found a portal to those kinds of sites. If anyone found jodi interesting, check out some of these links. Be forewarned it might not be work safe, and there might even be missing sites because I haven't been to these sites in years.
s narg.net/w ww.redsmoke.com/w ww.fakeshop.com/w .jodi.org/d 2b.org/
http://www.once-upon-a-forest.com/
http://www.
http://www.entropy8zuper.org/
http://
http://www.absurd.org/
http://
http://snudd.sil.at/
http://ww
http://www.superbad.com/
http://www.
http://www.silverserver.co.at/lia/
If you're going to see any, I always liked superbad myself. http://www.superbad.com/
-Rabbit
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
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
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.)