HTML: Is it Art? 309
joeljones writes "The New York Times (registration, yeah, yeah, yeah) has an interesting story about two artists who use HTML, Javascript, and other web technologies as their medium. Could be an interesting set of test cases for anyone writing a browser." While we're on the subject of artsy sites, I submit Zombo.com for your perusal. I believe it to be the only web site that claims the infinite is possible.
Re:oh my (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:oh my (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:computer code as art.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:computer code as art.. (links) (Score:4, Interesting)
http://www.once-upon-a-forest.com/ [once-upon-a-forest.com]
http://www.snarg.net/ [snarg.net]
http://www.entropy8zuper.org/ [entropy8zuper.org]
http://www.redsmoke.com/ [redsmoke.com]
http://www.absurd.org/ [absurd.org]
http://www.fakeshop.com/ [fakeshop.com]
http://snudd.sil.at/ [snudd.sil.at]
http://www.jodi.org/ [jodi.org]
http://www.superbad.com/ [superbad.com]
http://www.d2b.org/ [d2b.org]
http://www.silverserver.co.at/lia/ [silverserver.co.at]
Re: Christian Lemmerz (Score:3, Interesting)
I am from Denmark as well.
Christian Lemmerz is the guy who did the dead pigs. I forgot what the other guy was called.
Anyway, calling somebody a moron simply because you do not believe something to be art is a pretty cheap ad hominem. It's art because some people think it is. And he's not the only one to think of it as art, I reckon it's art as well.
The piece in question (with the dead pigs), called 'Scene', was about decay and the temporarity of life. Sure, the pigs are not art, but neither is a canvas and a bucket of paint. I personally find pieces like these very interesting. I really liked his Todesfigur and Gebeine.
But I digress, my point is, you can always find someone who don't think that a particular piece is art, so you can't write something off as not-art just because you think it's disgusting/irrelevant/stupid/insert term here.
Check out Dadaism, found art, and other kinds of offstream ways of expression.
Here's the thing... (Score:5, Interesting)
The question is not so much 'can HTML be art?', buy can something produced with HTML (or any other web technology for that matter) be art?
Among the web developer community there is a slightly condescending attitude to people who design for the web using tools such as Dreamweaver (real men code HTML by hand don't you know?), designers will maintain that they should be free to design with primarily visual tools only handling raw code to check for bugs. There is a difference between a designer and an artist not least in terms of intent. I know a lot of artists and designers as well as hardcore coders. What has struck me is that pure artists have more in common with coders in terms of personality and thought process and overall vision. Both types of people are good at abstract thought and holding a concept in their heads that they then translate into a finished work (getting them to explain these thought processes can be an...interesting experience to say the least). I've met a few coders who have been accomplished at some other creative endeavour, especially music.
None of this is to denigrate designers in any way, and many of them have similar attributes. But in terms of single-minded pursuit of an idea, my artist and coder friends are more similar to each other than they realise.
There are some supremely talented web designers out there who use tools that are primarily visual (as well as those who code by hand), but not many would say that what they produce is a work of art in the way that a pure visual artist such as a sculptor would.
I leave it to individual slashdotters to decide for themselves if any of the sites that proclaim themselves as works of art are indeed worthy of that status. For the record I am neither a designer, artist or a coder, so this is entirely based on observation. Maybe some other readers have a different perspective.
Flash sites are never art, by the way;)
Dude, where's my Karma?The Best Designs (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Sure? (Score:2, Interesting)
Have you read "Goedel Escher Bach" ?
In this book, Douglas Hofstadter defines language as "asynchronous crystals" : proof of intelligence, if you prefer.
Now, if you have a pile of fat or a dead pig, it'll be kinda hard to take it as someone's intended creation.
Hence the 0%.
If it comes with a sign that reads "Our sins", then, on the other hand, it might have a serious ethical meaning.
Now, also, if you see a perfect geometric figure on a sheet of paper, then it'll be esthetically meaningful : it has been worked by a human. But if it's called "circle", then, it has no meaning.
Of course, your mileage may vary but I hope you found some ethical meaning in my "bullshit".
Have a wonderful week-end.
If we're talking art.... (Score:2, Interesting)
Kind of abstract, but very good.
Ah, this old chesnut (Score:3, Interesting)
Let's try something else - can we prove that code can be poetry?
Poetry also tends to avoid definition; however, I think the best definition I've heard is that poetry is succinct use of language.
Since, say, C++ affords an enormous economy of expression, and a vast number of ways to accomplish a given task, then performing a given task in an elegant, succint way is surely perfectly valid poetry.
You can also argue the case with dictionary.com's definition of poetry [reference.com]: "a quality that suggests poetry, as in grace, beauty, or harmony: the poetry of the dancer's movements."
Re:Define "art" (Score:5, Interesting)
The whole point being that you can't just eat and/or have sex all day - you have to find other things to do to fill the time. Thus "art".
Let the arguements begin...
Really 4BAD.org??? (Score:3, Interesting)
anyway, the site is rather interesting, though I haven't figured out what it is. On could probably spend hours going through all of the "private" email on that computer...
As for ZOMBO, I have no idea what anyone is talking about, I don't have flash installed (probably for this reason)
Here is real art! (Score:0, Interesting)
<html>
<form>
<input type crash>
</form>
</html>
All other browsers will find it lame.
Re:HTML: Is it Art? (Score:2, Interesting)
Ah yes, forgot that one!
As I recall, the blenders were plugged in and people couldn't keep their hands to themselves.
zRe:Art/medium? (Score:2, Interesting)
But there is a lot of "music" that people will debate whether it is actually music. You just happened to name ones that obviously are.
Listen to some of John Cage's compositions, or other "experimental" music, including lowercase music [slashdot.org].
So no, you are wrong when you say that question only comes up with visual arts...
hampster dance (Score:3, Interesting)
This Alien Shore [merentha.org] by CS Friedman, featured a lot of stuff about code as art, including the interesting idea of "charting a program" to see if it made a "pretty picture".
I think there may have been some similar concepts in "Crytonomicon", and definitely "Snow Crash" by Neal Stephenson.
BTW my very first instructions for a computer were pencil on something that looked like a punched card but used pencil marks instead of punch holes, to generate calendars with ascii art pictures. We all wanted the picture of the horse, but mostly we got wizard of id, or Einstein. Ie the picture was selected randomly or sequentially or something but we didn't get to choose it.
And I'd been playing with the shapes you could make out of lcd numbers on calculators before that. 3838383;8383838 then x / y them etc.
I always seek "elegance" in mathematical equations and programming code, but I'm not sure that makes it "art".
Net.Art (Score:5, Interesting)
This is certainly not "news" since net.art has been around for well over 8 years now. jodi.org and 01.org (meantioned in the article) could probably be considered the "grandfathers" of net.art, though I suppose there could be some debate on that, depending on whom you talk to.
And while it's been around for a while it's only been in the last few years that more museums have been taking it seriously. The Walker, the Whitney and the SF MOMA are the big three that come to mind when thinking about museums with a large new media collections. More and more museums are understanding the significance of it as well.
And just with any digital medium there are some ethical questions when it comes to the artwork, such as copyright, and if it's ok to make digital copies of artwork, or does that dilute it? How many is too many? Some artwork is based off of other artwork, so it is ok to "steal" (copy) someone else's work (art or not) to make into my own art? There are parallels here with traditional artwork (like found object art), but also issues that are specific to this medium as well.
Then there's the issue of archiving. If a project runs off a DB and is only usable in Netscape 4, how do we archive it so that in 50 years we can view it? Do we archive just the software? What if future hardware can't run it? Do we archive the hardware as well? What if it relies on some form of online connection, but that online setup changes in the future (think security, etc) so that it cannot be reproduced 100 years from now? Have we then lost this piece forever? Obvioulsy there are a lot of questions that need to be answered in this area.
I think the real question though isn't "is it art", the question is how much impact will it have in the future. When Picaso made his paintings some people said he was crazy, or didn't think it was art, but in hindsight we know the outcome. The same is true for art in new media. Only time will really tell how much lasting impact it has on the way we think and approach art.