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WEB WORKS n.7

Anne Baker, Dr. Will Clayton, Julian Baker
Scars
1998
In its present state, Scars presents the visitor with a collection of scars, categorized by type, and with images of the mapped body. The work gives the reader means to provide his or her testimony, through narration or image, regarding his or her own scar. The site aims to gather together a hundred scar stories to form a single account of the body. Complementing this, medical texts describing different types of scars, together with images of surgical instruments employed in treatment, give a scientific basis to the project while also contributing their own images, those of science. While the images of scars and the information related to them arouse feelings connected to the experience of pain and suffering, other sections impart a humorous, though disconcerting tone to the project. Indeed, the scar palette, the schematization of bodies, the scar sounds, take the project on another track, towards the absurd. The work thus shifts to making us feel the monstrosity and impropriety of the curiosity that can characterize such a project. Furthermore, Scars exploits behavior associated with the medium: the exchange and confidence that e-mail gives rise to, the compilation and classification produced by computerized systems. In recent years, the body in all its forms, has been very present in contemporary art. The Internet was no exception. Scars alludes with great acuteness to recent progress in genetic and biotechnincal sciences that have made the body into an object, manipulated, transformed, and reconstructed on demand.
(requires Shockwave)
S.P.
Pierre Giner
Sentimental phone
1997
As its title suggests, this work stages a phone conversation between two lovers. It displays a portable phone equiped with a small screen; when the visitor clicks on a button, a short message appears, or the close-up of a face, man or woman. Over a sinister acoustic background, we hear snippets of conversation, short musical excerpts, tonal signals. The messages and fragments of conversation concern the ever-unsatisfied desire to communicate. The broken line, the answering machine, the incessant call to touch, to contact, create a mood of frustration, worry and chronic want. The machine ends up intervening with its own rules, its limitations and its ambition to substitute itself for real contact. Thus, the visitor can build her own little conversation or sentimental drama, have things said, or exist, according to her own desires, without involving any real contact. The fundamental desire for intimacy which the work refers to remains unsatiated.
(Icono, requires Shockwave)
S.P.
Beverly Hood
Encounter
1998
The project documents the daily conversations between two people who remain anonymous over the 30 day period. The conversations, clumsy and impersonal at first, concern computer equipment and problems, e-mail, they then turn to the project itself and its context. Little by little, intimacy is established between the two subjects. They tell about their daily activities, share reflections on different subjects, on their personal life. While preserving anonymity, the images produced during conversations on CUSeeMe show close ups of computers, views of the work space, familiar objects. Every week, the conversation is opened to a discussion group. At the end of the project, a supper is organized for the two subjects and some guests. The event was presented on the Internet, where the public was invited to participate from a distance. The project offers a fascinating look at the evolution of relationships between people communicating by email. It provides the opportunity to witness that progressive opening up toward the other and to take part in the meeting-as-event that ends the project. Produced during an artist in residence program organized by Furnace, Encounter was one of the art works presented during Maid in Cyberspace-Encore!.
(Furnace, Elevator)
S.P.
Brighid Lowe
Now Here/Nowhere
1998
This is the artist's first work for the Web. Now here/Nowhere stands out by its simplicity and elegance. Comprised solely of words, it begins with a play on "here" and "now", transformed to "nowhere". Dealing with the frustration of navigating the WWW, the work might be especially appreciated after some fruitless surfing on the Net, its humor and poetry provide a refreshing pause. The work is self-referential and deals with the status of text on the screen. Speaking in the name of words, the artist examines the sensuality of transferring words from paper to screen. Lowe makes judicious use of the medium and creates a poem in which a special calligraphy is produced for the words through the rhythm of appearances, movements and pauses. Now here/Nowhere is presented in the framework of the C-ship project produced by e-2 of Great Britain, in conjunction with nmp and DNP of Japan.
(C-ship, e-2, nmp, DNP, requires Shockwave Flash)
A.L.
Kristin Lucas
Between a Rock and a Hard Drive
1998
This work comprises a collection of tableaux consisting of images of mostly vacant, transitional spaces, anonymous and uninteresting in themselves: lobbies, parking lots, waiting rooms. These images occupy the centre of a transformed, interactive keyboard. Thanks to these keyboards the visitor can set off strange sounds or dialogues between animated objects that come to resemble comic book characters. Banal and stereotypical conversations and insignificant noises generated by this interactivity accumulate, from tableau to tableau, and finally produce a growing dissatisfaction. The work refers to the sometimes unremarkable and disappointing environment of the Internet. It also alludes the experience of surfing, the waiting and frustration that characterize it. Faced with the abundance and irrelevance of content, the Web's interactivity often turns out to be useless. And the possibilities of exchange (electronic mail, discussion groups) to which the work also refers often give rise to the expression of familiar, redundant and uninteresting content. Between a Rock and a Hard Drive takes an amused, critical perspective on the communication venue which is the Internet.
(Dia Center for the Arts, requires Shockwave Flash)
S.P.
Mark Napier
The shredder
This work invites you to shred a Web page by submitting its URL, and then returns you the page transformed, destroyed and rebuilt. The Shredder superimposes fragments of the HTML page source with elements of the displayed page, now become material for a new collage. What was organized and separate suddenly gives way to anarchy. The work highlights the means of appropriation (cut, copy, paste) and of manipulation provided by computer technologies and by access to material that is abundant, available and open (the source). The Shredder is in line with the many art works that borrow images created by others. A work of participation and creation that allows for the unpredictable, The Shredder also gives free vent to a kind of aggression toward the quantity of information on the WWW. In fact, another of the artist's projects, Digital Landfill, invites the visitor to get rid of burdensome Web pages altogether.
(requires Netscape 4.0)
S.P.
Simon Pope, Colin Green, Matthew Fuller
I/O/D The Web Stalker
1997
The Web Stalker is nothing less than a replacement for the other, commonly used browsers. This surprising project pays analytical and critical attention to the experience of viewing Web pages and information available on the Net. The Web Stalker provides the ability to reach a URL (crawler) and to see it in a new way. Among other things, the browser gives access to the visualized structure (map), extracts the text (extract) and saves it (stash). It is up to the surfer to define for herself what functions are appropriate for the visit. Menus appear as needed, no unnecessary element intervenes in the activity of reconnoitering a Web site. What is striking at first sight is the bareness with which the surfer is suddenly confronted. The blank screen provided by The Web Stalker at start up can be disconcerting, even disappointing. However, it immediately underscores the extent to which traditional browsers and methods of viewing pages rest on a quantity of visual information that obscures the content and true structure of the content. It leads us to face our expectations, our habits as users, and the way in which our activity is framed and shaped by the most influential browsers (Explorer, Netscape). Certainly, the talent and expertise required for the production of such a project are not within everyone's reach. The Web Stalker may rather be counted among those art works which reflect on the medium, in a manner more restricted and direct. Its stimulating and critical perspective, its refusal to simply adhere to what already exists, and its capacity for invention, place it among the most remarkable artistic projects on the Internet.
(Backspace) S.P.
Melinda Rackham
Line
1997
Melinda Rackham's site draws a line between physical and virtual space. The visitor navigates the site while witnessing the relationship between two people physically located in Tokyo and Sydney. Their correspondence, as well their pictures, become public property and their fantasies reality. Following the line, the viewer penetrates within these individuals' mental universe. Additionally, hidden links are found while moving the cursor across the page. On selecting mail, sixteen messages become available for reading. One can also reply. Navigation is intuitive and a site-map allows for easy orientation. The surfer can visit a virtual gallery where photography, installations and images of landscapes reconstitute fragments of the subjects' local and identity. Line sparks reflection on private life on the Net, and on human identity in a virtual space.
(requires Netscape 3.0)
M.T.
Alexei Shulgin
Desktop is
1997-98
With Desktop is Alexei Shulgin has initiated one of the most brilliant projects to be seen on the Internet. At once a collection, an exhibition, and a participatory work, Desktop is takes account in admirable fashion of several aspects of communication on the World Wide Web. The project gathers together more than 80 images of "desktops" that users have saved and sent to the artist. As it happens, the great diversity of these desktops and their whimsicality (several were specifically created for the project) show up obvious individual differences as well as the creative potential of the technological medium. Each desktop suddenly appears as a personal and private space, a surface that reveals the user, giving us the impression of being lead into a certain voyeurism. Indeed, the temptation to click on the icons and open files is felt more than once, though it cannot be satisfied, making us sense the limits of this networked incursion into the universe of another. In this sense, Desktop is reveals the private nature of the medium. Several very interesting artists have given themselves to the exercise and produced desktops that are creations in themselves. Those, for instance, of Garnet Hertz, Rachel Baker, Heath Bunting, Natalie Bookchin, and Alexei Shulgin himself, demonstrate a subtle understanding of the issues implied in this invitation. The artist-curator indulges in his own definitions of the significance of the desktop; among many others: "...your window to the digital world, ...a reflection on your individuality, ...your everyday visual environment, ...the face of your computer, ...your own little masterpiece, ...a psychoanalyst, ...the membrane that mediates transactions between client and server,..." For all these reasons, this work may be considered a great classic, a work of exceptional insight.
S.P.
Nell Tenhaaf
Neonudism
1997
Neonudism plays on the visitor's curiosity – or malaise – before a work that offers a collection of videos whose titles are suggestive of sexual scenes. Gradually, the expected little voyeuristic session becomes an enquiry into the remote sexual behaviour for which CUSeeMe gives occasion on the Internet. Vague images of a woman theorizing on such behaviour with the help of texts by Nietzsche, Bataille and Irigaray, replace those of bodies engaged in sexual acts. The recited texts are more than a little disconcerting themselves, while also provoking curiosity. The presentation acts as replacement for the sexual act, and makes one feel the desire for distance, for substitution, and for union with the machine. It transforms the desire for intimacy into something else, like self-knowledge, that takes the shape of an extension of oneself, of personification in the representation. Nevertheless, the work presents some images produced during actual CUSeeMe sessions. These little blurred images raise the question of the real and the unreal, of mediated contact and intimacy.
(requires Vivo Active Player)
S.P.
Reviews written by Aglika Likova, Sylvie Parent and Magalie Tremblay
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