A selection of participative art on-line by Roberta Bosco
and Stefano Caldana
Internet was born to be a powerful tool of information exchange
and simultaneous collaboration among people from different places
in the world. Throughout its development those who have lost sight
of this fundamental fact have failed or are destined to do so.
This is not the case of digital artists who, from the beginnings
of this new artistic expression, have focused their efforts and
creativity on a participative, collaborative and interactive direction.
Digital Jam is a selection of 11 projects conceived
for the Internet that shows different tendencies of artistic investigation,
focused on the collaborative aspect of the creative process
on-line in the course of the last 7 years.
The participative experience in digital art has very deep roots
going back to Nam June Paik’s experiences
at the beginning of the 70’s. However, regarding net.art,
one of the first was American artist Douglas Davies
with The World’s First Collaborative Sentence, a multimedia
document whose development and expansion depend on the audience
who, since 1994, adds text, sound, images and video. That year,
the artistic community sensitive to innovative projects discovered
to have a means at their disposal, which shortened distances and
changed completely the concept of work of art and copyright and,
of course, began to use it.
We are not in favour of encyclopaedic selections, so we’d
rather risk choosing a series of projects which, in our opinion,
shows the numerous tendencies in the field of artistic collaboration
on-line. Within the historic ones, we have chosen Davies
and Paul Vanouse and their database of secrets and excluded
undoubtedly interesting works, such as The Most Wanted Painting
by Komar & Melamid and Please Change Belief
by Jenny Holzer. French artist Gregory
Chatonsky and Americans Marek Walczak
and Martin Wattenberg take sides in the discussion
of digital art collections, and Eric Zimmerman
explores the dynamics of the interpersonal relations on-line with
an addictive and evil game. Andy Deck allows to perform a graphic
jam session in real time, Hannes Niepold suggests
a collaborative net.comic in constant growth and Bernd
Holzhausen keeps on expanding his famous Icontown, a
city made of pixel buildings by thousands of icon-addicts. Thomax
Kaulmann presents its already historic Open Radio Archive
Network Group and John Klima challenges the usual
model of interactivity and collaboration on the Internet with
Glasbead. Finally, No/E.html, a webring by Mexican artist Arcangel
Costantini, links with mythical works such as Desktop
IS or Refresh by Russian artist Alexey Shulgin,
webrings of artists pages from all over the world, which we have
excluded because they have lost several intermediate rings and
they are immediately interrupted.
Digital Jam invites the observer/user to leave his/her passive
role in order to take part in first person in this creative jam
session on the Internet.
THE PROJECTS:
1. Gregory Chatonsky (Francia)
IO-N.NET
http://io-n.net/
A site, a desinence, an artists' community in progress which shares
a domain with Chatonsky
where you can contribute all your digital designs. Brief projects,
extracts of more complex
thoughts, snapshots of a physical and mental state and reflections
in Flash format, gathered from
a common platform: ION, such as position, collaboration, repulsion
and a long list of names as
suggesting as the projects they give way to. The last work ...
mondialisation, naturally!
2. Arcangel Costantini (México)
No/E.html
http://www.unosunosyunosceros.com/No/E.html
As the historic webrings of the first period of net.art, No/E
is also a ring which shares a splash
page where, as the title in Spanish points out, you are not allowed
to stop. Many Spanish sites
devoted to digital art take part into this project, which also
examines the traffic signs' meanings
and analogies on the Internet, such as the pioneer Aleph or the
most recent Fiftyfifty.
3. Douglas Davies (USA)
The World’s first Collaborative Sentence
http://ca80.lehman.cuny.edu/davis/
In this project Davis thinks about those changes the interactivity
of digital media imply for artists.
It is a multimedia document whose development and expansion depend
on the audience who
- since 1994 - adds text, sound, images and video. The project,
which currently belongs to the
Whitney Museum in New York, included at the end of the year 2000
more than 200.000
contributions in a dozen of languages.
4. Andy Deck (USA)
Open Studio
http://draw.artcontext.net
Andy Deck opens his studio in New York for everyone who wants
to take part in a graphic jam
session. He has created a common interface for this where several
users can work in real time
in the same picture. This project, based on software written in
1990, is part of the open source
movement, that is, open code, co-operative and free.
5. Bernd Holzhausen (Alemania)
Icontown
http://www.icontown.de
A work in progress which proves that a project on the Internet
may have a continuous evolution
during several years... in this case, four! In this city made
of pixel buildings carried out by
thousands of netizens, there are skyscrapers and houses, igloos
and shacks, churches of
several denominations and public buildings, and each one has the
owner's name and his/her
webpage. Everyone can freely use this icons bank although, being
a "donation ware" project,
you are invited to donate an amount of money or time to an organization
helping homeless.
Icontown is a virtual city in constant evolution. Participative,
multiracial, multicultural and also
supportive.
6. Thomax Kaulmann (Alemania)
ORANG - "Open Radio Archive Network Group"
http://orang.orang.org/
In 1998 Thomax Kaulmann conceived this project addressed to musicians,
DJs, artists, record
companies and independent labels, in order to become a dynamic
platform for the distribution of
sound. ORANG represents a new radio generation which is being
developed on the Internet. Every
netizen can access the database and hear sound files, divided
in musical genres. However, you
need a password, delivered after being registered as a user, to
be able to add your own
compositions to the project.
7. John Klima (USA)
Glasbead
http://www.glasbead.com/
A project belonging to the so-called Software Art trend carried
out by a famous Microsoft
programmer in the computer scene of Seattle, who left a brilliant
and profitable career to devote
himself to art. In the bohemian Lower East Side in Manhattan,
Klima has developed a program
that allows to create in real time an enormous variety of visual
and sound scenes in a three-
dimensional environment, where as many as twenty people connected
via Internet may interact.
In 2000 Glasbead won an award at Siggraph to the most interesting
contribution in the field of
interactive art.
8. Hannes Niepold, Hans Wastlhuber (Alemania)
Cointel
http://www.cointel.de
A non-lineal net comic in constant growth, whose name is made
up of 'co' for comic, cosmic and
co-operative and 'intel' for intelligence. The last vignette of
the different stories which are being
developed is always empty. Users are invited to fill it before
being added to the story, where it
will remain with the last contributions, so that netizens can
vote for the one which will become
permanently part of the project. The works ruled out are not deleted,
but they are changed into
alternative narrative paths which channel the story into other
courses, creating a democratic
narrative structure which evolves branching out in different directions.
9. Paul Vanouse (USA)
Persistent Data Confidante
http://www.textgenomics.com/
This project, exploiting the guarantee of anonymity on the Internet,
suggests a secrets' transaction:
users must leave one secret to be able to read another, which
can be scored. In this way, those
secrets with the lowest score, that is the less interesting, are
deleted from the list and guests,
having a influence on the web content, become co-curators of this
secrets' database. A project
which may be considered an example of pure net.art due to its
simplicity and real interactivity.
10. Marek Walczak, Martin Wattenberg (USA)
WonderWalker
http://wonderwalker.walkerart.org/
This project introduces the concept of "WunderKammer"
in the digital age, the wonders room of
the 17th-century aristocratic houses. Whereas these were private
collections of weird and precious
objects, Wonderwalker has been conceived as a website collection-archive,
where everybody can
take part. It is an endless project that has much more in common
with interaction than with a
classification interest in itself. It is something similar to
a social space where collecting is used as
a way of communication. The collection may be displayed in three
maps: icons, collectors and
timeline.
11. Eric Zimmerman (USA)
SiSSYFiGHT 2000
http://www.sissyfight.com
A project staging the fight between three bunches of schoolgirls,
with a look which reminds a
little bit to the comicbook artist Robert Crumb. In order to win
you have to become the most
popular girl of the playground, ruining your opponents' image
and self esteem. This game, which
is always very crowded, shows the dynamics governing personal,
social and professional relations
in Western society. As in real life, established relations are
essential so, if you want to win the
game, make sure to chat with the right people and reconcile strategies
with them.
Text originally published in ArtFutura's 2001 catalog.
