Art Projects
"Siberian Deal"
http://www.t0.or.at/~siberian/vrteil.htm
This project by Eva Wohlgemuth and Kathy Rae Huffman is based on the idea of trading real objects and virtual information, and establishes a contact between Siberia and Cyberia. During a trip to Siberia organized via Internet and e-mail, typical western objects were traded for local objects from Siberian people. The latter objects were then brought back to Vienna. The website documents the journey as well as the deals and people involved, and thus explores parameters of communication. (Vol. 1 No. 3, June '96)
"Sisyphus"
http://oak.cc.conncoll.edu/projected-sites/sisyphus/
The Web may be a space for worldwide connections, but it also makes us aware of the spaces in-between, of download times, and push/pull. Antoni Abad's project "Sisyphus"--a joint presentation of the Contemporary Art Museum of Barcelona and The Museum of New Zealand/Te Papa Tongarewa--gives these characteristics of the Web a mythical twist. His Sisyphus seems to eternally tauten the rope of all implicit space, as if he was tightening a knot in the Net. (Vol. 1 No. 7, November '96)
"Smell Your Destiny"
http://www.lanminds.com/local/sr/srapoport.html
Sonya Rapoport's "Smell Your Destiny" was inspired by Peter D. Kramer's book, "Listening to Prozac," and creates a web of 'fishy' aromatherapy to parody the uses of prescribed medication for changing personality. Visitors are guided through a menu of personality traits that may be considered essential to success in our present society. Navigating a web of prescribed medical cures, contemporary negative traits, and assigned fishy smells, visitors eventually arrive at pages that suggest a fragrance remedy--a "fishy" cure for a society obsessed with attaining success. (Vol. 1 No. 4, July/August '96)
"Studio Visit"
http://www.diacenter.org/donegan/
Frames provide an underlying structure for Cheryl Donegan's "Studio Visit": not only the HTML kind--film frames appear as icons, a TV screen frames thumb prints (the artist's signature?) or photographs, while a sequence of photographs showing the artist alone in her studio unfolds in another frame. The journey through this studio may at times appear too erratic and unstructured, but the project succeeds in demythifying the studio visit as a ritual. Every encounter is already mediated and the language of art ultimately turns back upon itself. (Vol. 1 No. 12, April/May '97)
"Synesthesie"
http://www.cicv.fr/SYNESTHESIE/homepage.html
The third issue of the electronic review/art journal "Synesthesie"--produced by the journalist and art critic Anne-Marie Morice--focuses on synaesthesia, a condition in which one type of sensory stimulation creates perception in another sense. The bilingual (French/English) journal tries to explore the sensory phenomena through artistic correspondences among the five senses. Each of the senses is represented by a variety of art projects and the choice of the works presented and linked here makes this synaesthesic travel a stimulating experience. (Vol. 1 No. 8, December '96)
"Synthetic Pleasures"
http://www.caipirinha.com
Are we headed toward human optimization, or system crash? The Internet as a disembodied space, VR gaming, cyborgs and bionics, smart drugs and surgery to upgrade the mind and body... these are the issues addressed by Iara Lee's film (*.DOCumentary) "Synthetic Pleasures," which has recently been released nationwide in the U.S. The SP website features information on the film--script, interviews, clips etc.--its music and fashion. Although the site is basically designed as promo for the movie, it provides a good introduction to the cultural manifestations of synthetic pleasures; and, as Iara Lee puts it, these are issues nobody today can afford to abort / retry / ignore. (Vol. 1 No. 6, October '96)
"Tangled Web"
http://www.mxm.com/tangled/index.html
"Tangled Web" offers a labyrithine set of one-liners that lead the visitor/reader through a journey of polymorphic eroticism. If there is a deeper point here, it is the ironic relation between a search for the truth and a search for the next whiskey bar. Images at this site make it inappropriate for small children, but for others it offers an intriguing take on interactivity as a choice between what's behind Door No.1 ? Door No.2 ? (Vol. 1 No. 5, September '96)
"TechnoSphere "
http://www.technosphere.org.uk
Designing artificial life on digital networks has been the (virtual) pet project of quite a few Web developers. "TechnoSphere" allows users to design virtual life-forms by choosing from component body parts and a range of behavioral characteristics. Designed and tagged with the creator's e-mail address, the cyber beast is put into a fractal 3D world where it interacts with other artificial life-forms. The creature's maker can get a 2D snapshot of its appearance and will be informed about key evolutionary developments by e-mail. "TechnoSphere" can support many thousands of competing life-forms, and separate "TechnoSpheres" can be linked together over networks to form super environments. (Vol. 2 No. 1, Fall '97)
"Telepoetics Brisbane Realaudio"
http://xochi.tezcat.com/~malachit/home.html
This is (not) just a test: the Telepoetics Brisbane Realaudio page has been designed to test the sound files available at the site; it is definitely worth a visit. The site features more than 20 poetic pieces--a diverse array of material ranging from compositions and sound poetry by local artists to works by Frédéric Chopin, Kurt Schwitters, and William S. Burroughs. Submissions are welcome.
(Vol. 1 No. 10, February '97)
"Terminals: Considering The End"
http://www.arts.ucsb.edu/terminals/
"Terminals" is a Web project by Victoria Vesna (Art Studio, UCSB) and Constance Samaras (Art Studio, UC Irvine). The "Terminals" exhibition was shown simultaneously in art spaces at UC Irvine, Riverside, and Santa Cruz, and was presented in conjunction with an interdisciplinary conference investigating "the cultural production of death." The website serves as a gate to a variety of art projects and shows, providing multiple facets of 'The End' and giving a lot of body and weight to its consideration. The morbid charm of the interface, with its dried roses and an occasional snapshot of heaven, softens the blow. (Vol. 1 No. 5, September '96)
"This is the Place"
http://www.dreamscape.com/capepper/origin.html
Cary Peppermint's installation/performance piece "This is the Place," consisting of navigable photo montages of body parts, explores realms such as "sounds that escape me" and "the words that approximate sentiment" through "polaroids that preserve me." Peppermint's attempt to liberate the body is rather successful at turning the body into a dreamscape (accompanied by Jody Howard's and Britt Davidson's music).
(Vol. 1 No. 11, March '97)
"Tracks, a Hikingtour in Cyberspace"
http://www.iaehv.nl/users/det/hiking.html
Det Bazelman's "Tracks" is part of a project that was performed by ten European artists during the period March 19 until June 16, 1995. Each artist made an individual tour, ending at Castillion, France, where the artwork created during the tours was exhibited. The website 'tracks' the tour of three cyber-characters, Clarissa, Robert and Marit, who are still traveling. Clarissa left for Mars, the Red Planet, Robert lived for a long time on Roberts Island--until he discovered Ascension Island--and Marit, who spends most of her time in cyberspace, made a trip to Antarctica, tracking down the birth of the universe. Staging experiences in possible environments, "Tracks" explores representations of life in (cyber)space. (Vol. 1 No. 4, July/August '96)
"Truth is a Moving Target"
http://www.thing.net/~parallel
"Truth may have died as an ideology or religion but it still has to serve as a skeleton of our project called 'life'," as Erwin Redl explains in the introduction to his project. We still have to rely on "certainties" to bridge the gaps between the split-seconds, which is excatly what "Truth is a Moving Target" does. On the background of a grid, fleeting sentences--in almost random order and with ambiguous meanings--take the form of an interactive crossword puzzle and momentarily bridge gaps. Users may click on the grid and influence how the piece develops; if they don't provide any input, the program code itself builds a constantly changing grid of sentences. "Truth is a Moving Target" is yet another take on the flexible structure of meanings, which finds a perfect medium in the Web with its randomness and possibilities of linking and bridging distances.
(Vol. 2 No. 2, Spring '98)
"Uphold Dignity/Creativity Required"
http://www.cybercafe.org
This project by Heath Bunting explores "'the politics and meaning concealed in the abstract' FOR 'pleasure of viewer and victim cruelty'." The site's five sections--among them "Pain Of Existance" and "Visitor's Guide To London"--each use a short text as an entry to minimalistic b&w images. The subversive humor and angle of the text and images fuse into unique and unsual Web aesthetics. 'Cut the screen, crack the lense!' it says. (Vol. 1 No. 4, July/August '96)
"Vertical Blanking Interval"
http://www.adaweb.com
Vivian Selbo's "Vertical Blanking Interval" is a 'different' kind of WebTV. After entering the project by clicking on a TV screen, viewers are presented with multiple clickable images contained in frames that are "blanking" at regular intervals. Familiar TV elements, such as commercial images or a test screen (this is just a test), serve to point to the differences between the two media. The interspersed "Java alerts" are quite original--a welcome break from the usual Web programming.
(Vol. 1 No. 10, February '97)
"Virtual 66"
http://www.chron.com/content/interactive/voyager/66/
You don't always have to get there first; in fact, something has to be said for getting there later. Route 66 has seen better days, but Mark Evangelista and Glen Golightly traveling by car through its aging landscape draw draw our attention to roadsigns of the heartland's outer dream. Most successful is "Roadside Attractions." There, under "closed cafe," you can find a picture of "U Drop Inn Cafe," which--at the time of this writing--was still looking for a new owner.
(Vol. 1 No. 6, October '96)
"Virtual Harvester"
http://www.media-gn.nl/harvester
This website by South African-based artist Johann van der Schiff outlines his "Virtual Harvester" project, which consists of two parts--Data Field and Yield. It is is designed to address the need for global commitment and action to fight the problem of food insecurity. The project uses the harbor simulator at the Marine Safety facility in Rotterdam to create an installation: standing in the pilothouse, viewers can steer the virtual harvester through 3D-animated cornfields, which they may harvest. The cornfields represent the number of people living in poverty in 1996, based on the statistics of the United Nation's Poverty Clock which illustrates the growth of poverty. The 3D computer animation installation piece "Yield" addresses "a new kind of apartheid," the divide between the "information-rich" and the "information-poor."
(Vol. 1 No. 11, March '97)
"Weaving Granite The Sculptures of Jesus Moroles"
http://www.artsednet.getty.edu/
"Weaving Granite" is the second in a series of ArtsEdNet's online exhibitions and discussions that focus on using discipline-based art education (DBAE) in the classroom. The online exhibition features images of Jesœs Moroles' sculptures and a personal conversation between Moroles and art educator Dr. William McCarter, as well as additional reading material about Moroles and his work. Although the Web isn't exactly an ideal medium for the sculptures of Moroles, the site gives a good survey of the artist's work. The online exhibition also features "Common Threads," a DBAE unit focusing on "Granite Weaving," a work by Moroles currently on display at the National Museum of American Art, and a Navajo weaving on display at the Southwest Museum in Los Angeles.
(Vol. 1 No. 9, January '97)
"West Bank Industries"
http://www.westbank.org/
see article Vol. 1 No. 2, May '96