The Fire Escape is a a crowd-sourced example of web art. A number of artists have been asked to doctor a given image of a fire escape. As you scroll down, you see each artist’s interpretation of the fire escape. One is two men descending an image of Marcel Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase. And there are Simpsons, Spiderman, Pixel Art, PhotoShop effects and much more, more. One could do a whole study on the symbology of this project.

The whole effect is similar to a project I’ve written about before: zoomquilt. You will spend a happy few minutes smiling at the visual puns and another period of time wondering just what on earth does THAT mean.

An unfortunate aspect is that image are being sourced from a number of sites and some of those images are no longer available. Thus the site does not complete loading and there are occasional blank images as you scroll down.

This work and other works like it would really benefit from a bit more technology. For example, it would be nice to walk down passageways and be able to branch in alternate directions while seeing such images.

The Fire Escape

The Web Art of the Dot Com era is a Flash widget that you click on and lots of insanely great artistic things happen. People are happy with this. It works and it’s fun. What more could you ask for?

Art marches on. Comments like “She’s wearing Balenciaga. Last year’s…” are just as appropriate about web sites as they are about the rag trade.

We have real-time googling and mash-up Web Art sites now. Are they the Web Art 2.0 sites or is there something more that will happen? Is Web Art 2.0 officially under way or is it yet too happen?

A good test case might be the existence of Web Art Widgets for FaceBook or the Google OpenSocial Widget program. Once there are several such widgets, It will be say to say that Web Art has been upped to 2.0. Are there other such tests we can think of? Probably.

ample interactive design appears to be a “business card” web site for Alex Lampe. Perhaps “Lampe” is an anagram of “ample”. In any case this sites links top a number of clever and well-designed commercial web sites constructed in Adobe Flash. One link, however, (pointing to a folder on the the ample site itself) is a link to an on-line Web Art Instrument that, with your input, can create visual music.

First you load one or more instruments from the list at the top or bottom of the screen. Or click one of the presets on the right to load several instruments all at once. Then move your mouse around the screen. On screen symbols appear and musical instruments play.

The whole effect is more like an orchestra warming up more than a symphony in progress. There is obvious sophistication, care for detail and full technical sophistication here. Nevertheless, we await Rev 2.0.

Visual Acoustics

NETworking is an excellent introduction to early 21st century Web Art. Each work is well-designed, interactive and original.

Originality is the key element. Think of walking through a gallery of recent paintings. If you know art history, as you look at each painting, a little voice in your brain is saying - “Derivative of Warhol.” “Follows Picasso in the 50’s.” “Really bad Rauchenberg.” “Fontana did it better.” And so on.

The Haifa Museum exhibits of fourteen works of Web Art. Although all the works are presented on-screen via your monitor and are thus 2D (though they may represent 3D), you feel the freshness of a contemporary sculpture garden.

Each piece takes you into a unique environment - it’s own little world. Ultimately the viewing experience is more complex, more nuanced and more rewarding than any equivalent show of static canvasses.

Link [Through Rhizome.org]

NETworking is an excellent introduction to early 21st century Web Art. Each work is well-designed, interactive and original.

Originality is the key element. Think of walking through a gallery of recent paintings. If you know art history, as you look at each painting, a little voice in your brain is saying - “Derivative of Warhol.” “Follows Picasso in the 50’s.” “Really bad Rauchenberg.” “Fontana did it better.” And so on.

The Haifa Museum exhibits of fourteen works of Web Art. Although all the works are presented on-screen via your monitor and are thus 2D (though they may represent 3D), you feel the freshness of a contemporary sculpture garden.

Each piece takes you into a unique environment - it’s own little world. Ultimately the viewing experience is more complex, more nuanced and more rewarding than any equivalent show of static canvasses.

Link [Through Rhizome.org]

The Surveys

Scroll around the pixel graphics landscape and as you mouseover icons the answer to questions about happiness appear as pop-ups. Do jokes make you happy? 65.3% said “Yes” while 34.7% said “No”. The survey questions are fun. As you mouse around you begin to anticipate what the questions will be but the percentages always seem to be surprising.  It turns that the the thing the least likely to make you happy is a Stephen King novel. The most likely thing to bring happiness is sleep!  I learned all this from the delightful conclusions. If youwant you can take the survey yourself.

This Flash application was built by Chris Joseph and David Hume.

The source was www.babel.ca.

Eisenstein’s Monster 

Create your own Frankenstein monster as easily as clothing a paper doll or building a Mr Potato Head. The end product is kind of creepy to watch as lips move and eyes glance and nose twitches all in a manner that is realistic and unreal at the same time.

This Flash web application is by Chris Joseph who is a writer and artist currently in Leicester, England. You can find out more about him at www.chrisjoseph.org.

One nice thing is that you can design faces or you can let the computer make up its own designs. Thus the application runs unattended.

Sourced from the Rhizome Artbase.

Eisenstein’s Monster 

Create your own Frankenstein monster as easily as clothing a paper doll or building a Mr Potato Head. The end product is kind of creepy to watch as lips move and eyes glance and nose twitches all in a manner that is realistic and unreal at the same time.

This Flash web application is by Chris Joseph who is a writer and artist currently in Leicester, England. You can find out more about him at www.chrisjoseph.org.

One nice thing is that you can design faces or you can let the computer make up its own designs. Thus the application runs unattended.

Sourced from the Rhizome Artbase.

glyf: construct is the work of Duncan Holby, a designer /developer working in Richmond Virginia. His personal web site is at glyfdesign.com. The name glyf probably relates to the word “glyph” which is “A displayed or printed image. In typography, a glyph may be a single letter, an accent mark or a ligature.”

glyf:construct is a gallery with (as of this writing) fifteen individual works. Each work is a Flash file that allows you to control the movement of shapes in 3D by moving the cursor. The first work support very limited motion - horizontal mouse movement only while the later works support X and Y as well as mouse down events.

Each of the works is an example of Web Art. Each is a stand-alone work which allows some user interaction to control the display of the site. My favorite work is ge(o)m.v1. I really like the way this highly symmetrical form occasionally appears to be asymetric. Is this due to the eye playing tricks or the actual lag times in generating the lines. Who knows or who cares? The effect is captivating.

This site was sourced through the Rhizome ArtBase.

Is there a good place to start in order to get going with Web-Art? Most certainly. The correct starting point is Rhizome.org - ever since 1996.

Rhizome does it all correctly. It commissions web sites as works of art. It writes and about them and proselytizes. It encourages and supports artists and artistic movements. It curates, catalogs and gives prizes. It will even help you set up web hosting for your site. Rhizome is Web-Art.

So where’s the best place to start in Rhizome? Of course, it’s in their collection of Web Art at ArtBase. You will access over 2,000 sites by title artist name, title, keyword and even using a Java time line.

Why aren’t there more Rhizomes?