Web Art Trends

Over the past several weeks that I've been exploring the contents of Rhizome.org, I've noticed some trends that seem to be fairly common areas of interest in the present Web Art scene. Since I am talking about art for the internet, I wanted to select one trend, actually a "tag", that I have seen on many of the artworks on rhizome.org and that "tag" is "Artificial life". The artworks that have been tagged with Artificial life seem to deal with modifying genetics or transforming biological life into a digital world. The digital setting almost seems to let the artist take on the roll of God, without actually causing any real damage or harm to biological beings. A few artworks that follow this trend are:

Debra Swack's "My Perfect Child"
http://rhizome.org/object.php?47075

and her "Animal Patterning Project"
http://rhizome.org/object.php?47081

Chris Joseph's "Eisenstein's Monster"
http://rhizome.org/object.php?47030

Another trend that I've noticed in digital art or web art, is Interactive art. Artwork that the viewer can become part of or change an aspect of the peice seems to be a big part of the current digital art scene. Being able to "touch" artwork throws the traditional museum rule of "don't touch" out the door and opens up a whole new world, an interative art world.Here are some examples:

Alan Bigelow's "Because you asked"
http://rhizome.org/object.php?47096

Chris Sugrue's "Delicate Boundries"
http://rhizome.org/object.php?46944

Net Art

When it comes to art on the Internet, there are many different approaches that can and have been taken. After looking through the list that I received through class, I decided on three Web-artworks to review in this blog.

The first website is www.whitehouse.org, which was created as a project by the Yes Men. When you compare whitehouse.org with the real website of the Whitehouse, whitehouse.gov, it is a bit funny that .org is actually a better looking site and its content is much more enjoyable than the official.gov site. I really enjoy the Yes Men's approach to this and their other sites and feel that their satirical style is dead on and helps to get their points accross.Whitehouse.org is full of great entertaining content and the numerous sections and categories could keep a viewer reading for hours.

The Website www.agencyoforphan.com takes a fairly simple approach to address a serious issue. The homepage, and the pages that are linked to it, seem like something that myself and fellow students would be able to accomplish, yet it is still effective in getting the point across. This site and its layout will be helpful in brainstorming for our next assignment.

Brody Condin's Website, www.opensorcery.net/velvet-strike/ is one that I really enjoyed. While I've never played Counter-Strike before, I know people that were virtually addicted to the game and took it extremely serious. The fact that Condin developed anti-military Graffiti that can be entered into the game and appear on the walls is really impressive. Its amazing that something as simple as a few "tags" on the wall of a game can compel players to send hate mail too opensorcery.net goes to show how effective it really is. People take the game so seriously and by reading the "flames" on this site, just goes to show how involved people get with just a game.

Wandering the internet and exploring Derive

The word Derive means to obtain or recieve from a source or to trace the origins of something. While Browsing the internet, users surf through endless contact, going from one page to another and most of the time, no one stops to think how they ended up on a certain on a certain topic or site. The image above is a dipiction of a 30 minute journey that I had while browsing the internet without having an initial goal of being online. Myspace lead me to a friend's car, that reminded me of a paint article that I had been meaning to look up once again, so I searched for Street rodder magizine's website, then started thinking about different paint ideas and supplies and thats where I ended my web session. In a similar "experiment", I have used myspace started on my own page and by clicking a friend's page and then going to a page of a friend of theirs and so on, I was able to trace a path back to myself, through complete strangers friend's list. When you take the time to trace out where you have been on the internet and think about how it all relates, it can be quite intreresting. Life itself happens in a similar manner. We live our lives and become influenced and interested in so many things, but they are all related and traceable back to the origin in which they derived from.

Taxonomy, Folksonomy, and Web 2.0

In the past few years, there has been many drastic changes in the way that people use the internet and these changes have brought about a new way of searching for information and content on the internet. In the world of Web1.0, search engines seem to be programs that use a Taxonomy system in order to provide search results. They list results in order of which site have the most content relating to the search word and the hierarchy seems to have been pre determined and stays on track. Searches are broken into levels and the results or strict to the search word, making the search seem very Mechanical and scientific.
With the development of Web2.0 and the bloom of social networking sites, users are now able to share blogs, photos, music, and videos with each other, with very little effort. In order to shift through all the media that is available on these sites, such as youtube.com, myspace.com, and photobucket.com, users choose “tags” that relate to the material that they have uploaded. These “tags” are a method of Folksonomy, a collaborative categorization system, which tends to leave a sense of freedom in the searches. Different users may have different interpretations of a word for a “tag” which tends to make searches come up with much broader and often more interesting results. The Folksonomy and “tag” system can take users on a journey through the interpretations of other users and can sometimes end up introducing a searching user to something completely new that might interest them.

Hypertext:The Garden of Forking Paths

The Garden of Forking Paths, by JL Borges, can be read in a regular text format at http://courses.essex.ac.uk/lt/lt204/forking_paths.htm, but the same story as been turned into a hypertext document at http://www.geocities.com/papanagnou/cover.htm and there, it takes on a new modern look and approach that goes along with the very definition of "hypertext". The prefix hyper means an overcoming of the normal and old linear contraints that written text has been stuck too since ancient times. To read the hypertext document, the reader must click on words/links that take them to another part of the story and hypertext itself is known as text on a computer that will lead users to other areas that contain related information. The use of the hypertext or hyperlinks in The garden of Forking paths is ironic because depending on which word you decide to click, it could take you down a path to a different part of the story. Once a reader realizes that the hypertext must be utilized to read the story and each of its sections, it becomes a very natural way to read through a story online and is almost easier than scrolling through a whole traditional text document online, where a reader can tend to get overwhelmed and continueously lose their place.