JOAO SIMOES : #1

. 2005-04-11: Brought to you by number one Joao Simoes might be a genius. Between January and May of 2003, he traveled through the backwaters and country lanes of the web looking for moments of true web zen. His goal: to be the first visitor to an apparently active web page, as evidenced by the page’s hit counter. For example: The hit counter is definitely a relic of the early web. Olia Lialina may have missed a trick in her text about the vernacular web. True headz don’t use them any more - now that we have fancy tools like Webalizer, the little clicker doesn’t have quite the same appeal it used to. Maybe this is because they were abused by people who ‘padded’ them by a few hundred thousand here or there. If I see a stat counter reading anything over 136, then I get suspicious. But to find a brand-spanking-new, never-been-hit counter? That’s purely quixotic. Did the site’s creator never look at their own page? Didn’t the webmaster know to start the counter at 53,042 instead of zero? Was the page never visited by the Google bot? In spite of the challenges, I can understand why Simoes went on this search. These pages have never before been seen by human eyes. It’s like excavating King Tut’s tomb or something - the thrill of discovery. And if you’re lucky, this thrill can one day be yours. I’ve decided to conduct an experiment. I’m inserting a web counter in this blog post. The next visitor will see that big number one roll up on your screen. Whoever you are, could you leave a comment and tell us how it made you feel, so we can live vicariously through you? Raiders of the Lost ArtBase by Michael Connor Rhizome ArtBase http://www.rhizome.org/art/exhibition/raiders/ Joseph Ernst private collection