'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.

Whitneybiennial.com

I found this website earlier in the year having a tinker around online looking at some net art websites after hearing about this paper and thinking that I might like to enroll in it.

This website was put together at the same time at the 2002 Whitney Museum Biennial, but was not associated with the institution. It took me some time to get my head around this, and the lack of information concerning the reasons behind its inception online made me initially think that it was simply the online component of the Whitney Biennial. This is actually not the case, and I'll discuss that later. Let's just say I feel a little duped and it has caused me have to rewrite this blog!

The URL takes you to a 'title' page with simple caricature of the face of an old man. I refer to it as a title page because it has no content on it or linked to it. It functions as a preparatory page asking you to click your way into the project. It is itself an artwork with the function of giving the viewer a taster for the what the project is going to be like once you have entered, like the title page or cover to an exhibition catalogue. Once you have clicked on the 'enter the whitneybiennial.com' link you are transported to the main platform website which acts as a portal to another site that hosts the commissioned 122 artists' works.

The whitneybiennial.com portal is not only an index to the associated content of the online exhibition but is also a dynamic net art project in its own right. The artist who helped design the platform website and who curated the project Miltos Manetas has used very basic form of Flash animation for the site. The word 'Office' at the bottom of the page helps to inform us that this part of the site has been designed to resemble just that. In very simple linear images resembling hand-drawn graphic design, Manetas has created a three-dimensional room and placing within it chairs and an executive-sized meeting table and a blackboard on the back wall. Within the office are links to information about the project in the form of clickable speech bubbles that hover above the table which bring up new pop-up windows. The blackboard upon the back wall has the word "neen" written upon it, which when clicked on bring up a flash animation of little 'neens' darting over the image of the office around the screen, some with wings to "help" them fly about. After investigating the significance of the word "neen" I discovered refers to a "still undefined generation of visual artists" [Manetas, 2000-2006 http://www.neen.org/neenmanifesto/index.htm] There's so much information out there about this project and so many related projects that it is hard to know when to begin and end in terms of what I describe in this blog. I might just have to urge you to have a look at this website too. I keep coming across more and more interesting and exciting links to other projects, that's the trouble with the internet! It's so insidious! I am forever opening up more and more links until my poor little iBook can't handle it anymore.



Back to describing design of the whitneybiennial.com page, at the foot of it is the image of a snake which runs horizontally and basically functions as a tool bar. Emanating upward from the snake is a list of all the artists who were commissioned to put together a flash animation art work for the whitneybiennial.com project. If you hover the mouse over a name you are taken to another "room" like the office in which a snap-shot still image has been taken of their artwork, and is presented as though it is hanging up on the wall, in a sort of 'white-cube' type setting. Some artists' works have a room to themselves while others are displayed in a 'room' together. Moving between 'rooms' does not navigate you away from the whitneybiennial.com page. As you run your mouse along the snake and over the names of the artists, the site unravels from right to left (or left to right- whichever direction you prefer) as though you are walking along a gallery hallway, or watching the unravelling of a panorama. When you arrive at a 'room' with a work in which you are interested, clicking on the snapshot of it navigates you away from the whitneybiennial.com website and to the other site that hosts the actual artwork itself. [http://www.manetas.com/eo/wb/files/]

The website is relatively easy to navigate and the content within the site (links to the artworks) is easy to find. One thing I did find a little frustrating is that as the links to access the different 'rooms' within the space are activated by hovering your mouse of the name of the artist you are interested in instead of clicking on it. A slip of the hand means that screen changes quite rapidly and it can get a little dizzying. Also, and this might because NZ broadband isn't very fast at all, sometimes hovering the mouse over the first names along the snake wouldn't work, but clicking on them would take me to their 'room'.

In the 'office' below the blackboard is a little door with a speech bubble link that says 'old version'. If you find the website a little difficult to navigate clicking this link will take you to the project's original platform. http://www.manetas.com/eo/wb/w/pages/index.htm
I think it is good that the designers' offer a second way of accessing the project for those whom may not be familiar with or like using such interactive interfaces like the final version of the site, who prefer a more 2-dimensional way of reading the information provided. I think that they best way to access the works is by choosing to look at them on this version of the site, as thumbnails.

I initially read the site as being an online part of the Whitney Biennial 2002. I have to admit that I was kind of confused and found it incongruous that an art institution would support a work that seemed to be critiquing the way art institutes operate within an exclusively fine-art tradition that favours real objects and paintings to be displayed within a physical space, a white-cube. However, after reading a statement by Manetas that I found by clicking on one of the interactive speech bubbles in the 'office' that says 'wb story' I unraveled an amazing story of subterfuge that had just taken place where it seems I was the main victim! Manetas explains therein that he wasn't intending on critiquing the museum, he was just interested in promoting the groups 'neen' and 'telic'. [Manetas 200-2006 http://www.manetas.com/eo/wb/files/story.htm] And, that whitneybiennial.com wasn't actually associated with the Whitney Museum, even though it was inaugurated at the same time using the same name! Only after following up with a bit of further reading did I realise the error of my ways. I am sure I am not the only one!

In spite of all that new information, I still maintain that whitneybiennial.com is a critique of the museum-space and how net-artists are marginalised in the art-world, or at least that seems to me to be the dominant message sent. The are operating through the guise of and up in the face of the Whitney Museum as an institution and this sends a powerful message! The more I read about this project the more complex it becomes, and this blog really does not do justice to all of the complex and exciting history, influences and problems surrounding the project. I am thinking that I will have to do my seminar on this this! I would definitely recommend that you check this website out. In my next blog I think I will talk about a couple of the artworks from within the show that I thought were interesting. Please leave me feedback!