Internet Art
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Mark Amerika Grammatron is an experimental multimedia environment developed by artist Mark Amerika in 1997. The nonlinear narrative concerns Abe Golam, an "info-shaman," whose alternate persona is Grammatron, a genderless digital being. Abe's surname alludes to the medieval Jewish legend of the golem, a robotlike servant made of clay and brought to life, who is considered a prototype for man-machine myths from Frankenstein to cyborgs such as the Terminator. |
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Lew Baldwin Lew Baldwin launched Redsmoke in 1995 as a vehicle for a fictitious rock band but says it "quickly evolved into a depository for the subconscious." The content includes "Platters," an episodic story begun in 1997 about a man who finds evidence of an escaped "programmed" human worker. The narrative unfolds through textless animation, using Flash, a software program that requires no interaction from the viewer. A soundtrack of electronic music, composed by Baldwin, accompanies the animation, echoing his original concept for the site.
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Ben Benjamin Superbad is a seemingly endless funhouse of graphics, images, and text launched in 1997 by web designer Ben Benjamin. Laced with references to popular culture, from the rock band Iron Maiden to the cult film Planet of the Apes, the site also features stunning abstract animations and satirical texts. There is no fixed entry point because Benjamin changes the homepage every day, adding new content on an ongoing basis. The unpredictable and nonlinear experience offered by Superbad mirrors the medium of the web itself. |
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Fakeshop Website. Core members: Jeff Gompertz, Prema
Murthy, Eugene Thacker |
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Ken Goldberg Website commissioned by the University of
California Berkeley Art Museum and originally presented as Ken
Goldberg/MATRIX 186/Ouija 2000. Courtesy Catherine Clark
Gallery, San Francisco |
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®TMark At the core of the multimedia project ®TMark (pronounced "art-mark") is the Internet database rtmark.com. Although this site may appear to be just another corporate presence on the web, ®TMark's purposes are diametrically opposed to those of the corporate world it imitates. Using the site to research one of ®TMark's "mutual funds" yields "accounts" with stock-ticker-like names, suggesting how users can engage in acts of corporate sabotage. ®TMark also pairs "donors" (investors) with "workers" who undertake projects ranging from serious campaigns, such as preventing corporate juggernauts from usurping intellectual property, to sillier ventures promoting llama delivery services in lieu of expensive and environmentally damaging overnight airfreight. |
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John F. Simon, Jr. John F. Simon, Jr.'s Every Icon is a Java applet, a small program that automatically downloads from the Internet and runs on a computer's hard drive. It generates every possible combination of black-and-white squares in a grid of 32 x 32, or a total of 1,024 squares, beginning with all white squares and ending with all black. On an average home computer, it would take several hundred trillion years for the process to conclude, which is Simon's way of "making you think about a very, very long time." |
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Darcey Steinke Internet project commissioned by äda 'web; Digital Arts Study collection, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis In 1998, novelist Darcey Steinke was commissioned by the website äda 'web to write a short story specifically for the nonlinear environment of the Internet. The central story is linked to nineteen shorter texts, designed with structures called "frames" that subdivide a single web page into smaller sections. The inclusion of Blindspot, created as a work of fiction, in this exhibition reveals how traditional distinctions between disciplines-art, literature, design-are blurred by the new medium of the web. |
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Annette Weintraub Internet project commissioned by Turbulence with a
grant from the Jerome Foundation and supported in part by a grant
from The City University of New York PSC-CUNY Research Award
Program Annette Weintraub's Sampling Broadway is a virtual tour of five downtown locations along Manhattan's famous thoroughfare. The site equates the city with media space by layering panoramic images of the five locations with movies and animations interspersed with text, voice-over narration, and sounds of the street. Weintraub is interested in the simultaneous experience of reading, seeing, and hearing as a metaphor for the dynamics of urban life. Rather than present a frozen, literal view, as is typical of panoramic photography, Weintraub evokes the density and complexity of city space.
Internet art is sponsored by France Telecom North
America. |
