'Websites Are The Art Of Our Times'

I've recently been looking at the web-art projects by Miltos Manetas, an artist who I discovered earlier this year when exploring the whitneybiennial.com project [blog #1]. I am interested in his work because I like how he often uses relatively simple design aesthetics (in Flash usually) to convey clever and complex ideas. Take for example the work A Portrait of Joseph Kosuth, 2006 (above) – the artwork’s title is first of all both misleading and ironic – in the place of the subject or sitter (Kosuth) there is instead text in parentheses stating – ‘This is not a Joseph Kosuth’. Something tricky is going on here – I can sense there are multiple layers to this work and it’s going to bug me if I don’t get to the bottom of them.

First of all, A Portrait of Joseph Kosuth clearly references the appearance of Kosuth's Art as Idea as Idea series (example right is Meaning , 1967), which were also characterised by white text upon a black background. So, I suppose Manetas’ work could be seen as a sort of symbolic portrait that pays homage to the art of Kosuth - it being in the style of Kosuth while not actually being a Kosuth, as the text suggests. But there are certainly other potent references in this work too. When I first saw it, a mixture of confused thoughts swelled in my head: Joseph Kosuth' - so it’s a conceptual work? But he's referencing Rene Magritte too right, so it is also somehow a surrealist work? - Can that even exist? I suppose it does now... Huh?

The link to Rene Magritte is through his work entitled Le Traison des Images or The Treachery of Images (1928-1929) more commonly referred to as 'Ceci n’est pas une pipe' or 'This is not a pipe.' (left) Magritte's works were often witty and amusing explorations of representations of objects to get us thinking about how we perceive works of art. At first the text stating ‘this is not a pipe’ in The Treachery of Images seems to be a contradiction, seeing as there is a pipe in the picture. The point is that the pipe is not a real pipe but merely a representation or image of a pipe. The text in Manetas’ work tells us that his work of art is not a Joseph Kosuth, even though it may appear to be because it relates in every way to Kosuth’s work.

So it’s evident that Kosuth and Magritte produced quite different works in terms of style, but both similarly sought to explore the existing boundaries and nature of art, and make us question what we are looking at. Manetas' work seeks to follow on with this tradition. In his essay Websites Are The Art of Our Times, he states that websites are 'today's most radical and important art objects.' He believes that the web is not just another type of "media" but mostly a "space", wherein a website should be thought of as having physical presence - as a "web entity". Each web entity is a work of art in itself - at least I think that's what he means. I find his writing quite confusing.

So like Magritte and Kosuth, Manetas is asking us to re-examine and question what we believe constitutes art – to explore our entrenched expectations of art, and viewing habits and to critically engage with art. They all advocate for a reassessment of existing art-boundaries. Manetas would describe this exploration as the 'Telic spirit', which he describes in his essay if you are interested. The Telic Spirit describes a new way of thinking, or a new way of seeing and conceptualising and making sense of new media languages, and art for that matter; looking through their primary functionality and into their potential for expressivity. In a way, I suppose you could see Manetas' A Portrait of Joseph Kosuth as a manifestation of the “Telic spirit”.

I think Manetas thinks both Magritte and Kosuth would be proud this work and his interest in exploring the web as a new and exciting space for art and art production, as if he is carrying on a legacy for art that they both were also interested in. I don't think I've really discussed all that I really wanted to about this work and its complex associations, but right now my mind has gone blank, so I'll have to leave it there.

Ever wondered what Jupiter sounds like?

The idea of space, (as in "the final frontier") has always disturbed me. I think it is the "great unknown" aspect of it that gives me the creeps. Thinking too much about space has literally kept me awake at night. The vast and infinite nature of space reminds me in moments of weakness of my own insignificance by comparison. I sometimes think being an astronaut would be fascinating, in a completely terrifying sort of way - there's something about space which seems completely unreal to me. I suppose that's because I've never had, nor will I ever have any physical experience of space other than looking at it from down here. Or, maybe I will....

Today I found a website that broadcasts live streams of the sound of space. You can listen here if you are interested: http://www.radio-astronomy.net/listen.htm

According to the website:

"Listeners will hear the acoustic output of radio telescopes live. The content of the live transmission will depend on the objects being observed by partner telescopes. On any given occasion listeners may hear the planet Jupiter and its interaction with its moons, radiation from the Sun, activity from far off pulsars or other astronomical phenomena."

The sounds are signals transmitted by planets and stars which are converted into audio and then transmitted online for our listening pleasure. When I listened to the stream what I heard couldn't really be described as pleasing - all I could hear was a scratchy static noise. I'm not entirely sure what I am listening for. I will have to listen again to see if I can determine any different sounds in the stream.

Radio Astronomy is a project organised by an online collaboration between a group called r a d i o q u a l i a and various radio telescopes located throughout the world. As the website explains, together they "are creating 'radio astronomy' in the literal sense - a radio station devoted to broadcasting audio from our cosmos." The Radio Astronomy project has been streaming the sound of space since 2004.

r a d i o q u a l i a is an art group founded by New Zealanders' Honor Hager and Adam Hyde. In their projects they are interested in exploring the fields of art, science and technology and specifically in the ways in which "broadcasting technologies such as radio and online streaming media can be used to create new artistic forms, and the ways that sound art can be used to illuminate abstract ideas and processes."

It's amazing to me that I can sit at my computer at home, on planet Earth, and listen to the sound of outer-space. Listening to the live feed online from home is an example of how media technologies and communication networks such as the Internet compress space and time. Through my Internet linked computer I can listen to outer-space without physically visiting it myself - instead, the Internet brings the space of outer-space to me. Doreen Massey believes these faster and more intense flows and interconnections of communications and transportation have facilitated a change in our contemporary experience of time and space.* The Internet can facilitate an exchange of data at a rate that was previously impossible, and we've come to rely on this on a daily basis - communicating through emailing, downloading music online, online banking, are a few examples whereby the Internet has changed our perceptions of space and time.

In this project the radio-telescope apparatus picks up signals and transmits them into audible noise which is an impossible task for the human ear, meaning even if I could spend the time traveling to outer-space I would not be able to hear the same sounds transmitted online by Radio Astronomy. Thus the project brings together the potential of the telescope and the network capabilities of the Internet to create something for access in the virtual world that would otherwise be impossible to replicate in the actual world, other than conceptually.

This project also reminded me of the Fluxus artists of the 1960's. Fluxus described a network of artists who were interested in exploring the chance element in art, and in blending different artistic media with an early emphasis on exploring the properties of sound. The Radio Astronomy project employs the Internet and radio telescopes as types of artistic media, capturing, converting and transmitting the chance movements of planets and stars. Thus, it is in the intersection and relationship between these media that the artwork is created. I was also reminded of early Italian Futurist Luigi Russolo (1885-1947) who proposed that urban and industrial sounds could be thought of as 'new and enthralling sources of musical material.'* In Radio Astronomy, r a d i o q u a l i a have employed the radio telescope as a musical instrument which preforms "an ongoing and automated composition nuanced by the astronomers' target observations, the atmospheric conditions of a particular period, and the operational condition of the telescopes."

This project doesn't make me want to become an astronaut any more than before I read about it, but has certainly given me a lot to think about. I've just been listening again and this time I've heard a whole variety of awesome sounds - some examples include a ping like an elevator door opening, a shrill noise like fireworks going off, the sound of paper burning and a weird R2D2-like beeping. OK, I have to admit, I'm kind of scared I might hear something I don't want to hear... from a certain crop-circle creating species, not that I'd know what I was listening too probably, unless they spelled it out for me. It's pretty freaky Bowie.

*Texts used - New Media - A Critical Introduction. Martin Lister, Jon Dovey, Seth Giddings (eds) 2003, Routledge, p.171
The art of Noise, David Toop - 2005 http://www.tate.org.uk/tateetc/issue3/theartofnoise.htm

John Maeda & the "One Line Project"

The One Line Project was created by John Maeda, an MIT trained software programmer, who is also a pioneer in the development of digital art and design since the 1980's. One Line is one of his many artistic projects that explore the inherent creative possibilities of computer software technology, and the web as a medium that allows for the expression of these possibilities.

For this project, Maeda was inspired by the "Hands Across America" campaign, a fundraising event held on Sunday May 25th 1986, which saw 7 million people hold hands in a human chain for 15 minutes along a path across the United States, from New York to California, L.A. Each participant paid $10 and the proceeds were donated to local charities.

On contemplating the achievement of Hands Across America, Maeda started to wonder about whether or not it would be possible to effectuate a line 'that was longer than the perimeter of the earth.' To achieve this Maeda wrote a basic system with 'a funky JAVA-based client that collected lines from people all over the world.' People were invited to draw part of the line and upload it to a server, and in 1999 the contents of what Maeda terms the 'line database' organised into an exhibition called "oneline.com", which was also the name of the server. In the two years, from the announcement of the idea to the actualisation of the project, around 4 kilometres of 'line data' was collected. Maeda's rather large and seemingly impossible goal was 40,000 kilometres! Imagine downloading that to view - it would take an eternity!

Maeda wrote software to allow him to join each of the individual lines from endpoint to start point. This allowed him to manipulate the lines to get them to fit on a single canvas. Maeda has made the softcopy version available for you to access from his website 'Maeda Studio'. You can choose to view a selection of the line samples before they were assembled and a section of the final tapestry in different resolutions, depending on your computer's browser capabilities. Maeda has also uploaded the entire tapestry if you should feel brave enough to load it.

Initially the line was printed out using the ratio of 72 pixels for every one inch, and was displayed as a tapestry at the Ginza Graphic Gallery, in Tokyo in 1999, run by the Dai Nippon Printing Co. Ltd. Within the gallery there were also computers running the software programme Maeda created from the line database. Over 4,000 people participated, which is a fair few less than the 7 million for Hands Across America, but One Line is still probably one of the largest collaborative artworks ever created! Without the Internet as a medium to receive and arrange the works, it would have been a very difficult undertaking to realise such an enormous project. Can you imagine fitting together 4000 kilometres of lines on paper? What a task. Imagine what would have happened if Christo and Maeda had collaborated on this project - my guess is that the outcome may have been more like Hands Across America - maybe with 7 million people holding a portion of the 40,000km printed line from the east to west coast of America, whilst holding hands maybe? Something to think about.

The Arcade Fire band website

I found this website recently while I was at work with very little to do. I wanted to share it with you because I think it links into the discussion we were having in last Friday's class about bands creating album art potentially as a means to re-generate public interest in purchasing their CDs, at a time where so many of us download our music free from shareware programmes. Similarly, more and more bands are creating dynamic online identities on sites that provide more that just information about when their next gig is, or the release date of their new album, but include profiles the band members, photographs and blogs, as a means to invite fans into their personal world, or so the websites' suggest.

The site of which I have included the screenshot above, is accessed from a primary contents site for the band, which is http://www.arcadefire.com/flash.html
From here you can access auxiliary Arcade Fire sites, which include a fan site, the new album Neon Bible site, the store and a pre-ticket sales site. I mainly looked at the band site, but the other's are well worth a look too. Their online empire is pretty big.

One you have clicked on link entitled 'Band Site, Personal Secrets' you are navigated away to another screen within the network of sites, which is characterised by the image of what seems to be a digital version of a "glance wheel", which is sort of like a view-finder. Clicking on either the right or left hand that is situated under the wheel's window activates the the wheel to move around and present a new image which is associated with a member of the band. Below the image appears a different link each time the wheel is spun, that says something like 'Jeremy's Scrapbook' or Will's Journal' or 'Sarah's Cookbook'. I am very aware of how confusing this description is, so urge you to have a play around with it. The website is like a game I suppose, where we are invited to uncover hidden treasures buried within the site. There are links hidden woven into the interface that can be uncovered if you hover your mouse around the screen.

If you leave the screen idle for a while, the site is programmed to activate quirky little things to happen, like weird fire-birds to walk across the bottom of the screen, or heads to bob-up from under water within the window. You can then click on the heads to activate them, or there's one section of the wheel that has a connect-the-dots game within it. You can use the mouse to draw a line to connect actually draw on the screen and connect the dots.

You are invited to snoop around the site and uncover the band's secrets, as the title of the link suggests. This is further exemplified by the use of terms such as 'journal' or 'scrapbook'. Clicking on these links takes you to personal photos and blogs entries, where you are invited to learn about the lives of each band member, like viewing photos of Tim mowing the lawns. The way this is presented by the site suggests it was put up by the band members, but I suppose we'll never really know if that's real or not.



The website was co-designed by a Vincent Morriset, who is a Canadian designer who has worked on a variety of similar projects, more information on him can be found through links at the bottom oh the band's home page. Morriset's own page is pretty interesting, and has a similar application on it to the connect-the-dots game on the Arcade Fire website where you can "pick-up" a pencil and write messages over the screen.
On this website there are a heap of other projects that Vincent Morisset has worked on that are really interesting and dynamic too.

Every time I begin to end this blog, I think I will just go back to the site and have another look to see if there is anything else I'd like to include, and uncover a handful of other links that I think are awesome and want to discuss, such is the wealth of interesting bits and pieces on the Arcade Fire and associated sites. The online identity that the band has created for themselves, or had created on their behalf by Morriset is complex, vast, quirky and interactive. Every part of the site is crafted to engage the viewer in making a connection with the band and to fulfill a need for a fan to know everything there is to know about it.

Finally, the best part of the website and the last thing I want to share is this interactive video work. Click on this image to the right to check it out, it's great.