A WINDY NOTE TO JOURNALIST JON CARROLL ABOUT EARLY DAYS ON THE WORLDWIDE WEB: Jon, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about my early thoughts re the effects of the web--and was on the Well way back, too. But in 1995 I was invited to build an artist’s website for the Whitney Museum of American Art. Other artists were also invited, but I had Jim Newman working with me (the long-time one-man supporter of SF art, music and film). Jim took my work and built the website around it. According to David Ross, then director of the Whitney, our Hollywood Archaeology site was the first artist’s website commissioned by a major art museum, not that that’s important, just a historical footnote. What the website was to me was simply another great way to get stuff out there, to throw out the art and see what bounced back. It was a wonderful way to exhibit for a lazy social schlub like me: no framing, no packing, no shipping. No opening! Nobody spilling red wine on my new shirt, bought just for the opening. But the best thing of all was that people emailed me to ask questions, and I could answer in my own time. At the time I wondered if a web exhibition would suffer from the lack of tangibility, of surface, of seeing actual objects and ephemeral debris of the process in person. Frankly, in the end I preferred the web, especially for idea-oriented work like mine. In the end, however, the great plus was that the show didn’t end. Now, close to twenty years after this sort-of historical event, the exhibition is still up, unchanged; an art event that has remained the same as it was since the day it went on the web. Neither moths nor rust doth corrupt....(is that the actual biblical quote? I guess I could ask the web....) Old (f)art reflections.... Sorry to be so windy today.
Posted on: Fri, 15 Aug 2014 20:59:37 +0000
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