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Ditte Ejlerskov’s Gradients + Documentation Trope’s

An interesting recent discovery in light of my recent post discussing Rothko, gradients etc has been the work of Ditte Ejlerskov, and in particular her series ‘The Cleanse’. 

https://ditteejlerskov.com/the-cleanse.html

This body of work, as she describes it, is an exercise in ‘cleansing my practice from external inspiration such as mainstream culture, politics, general negativity, fear and expectation related input’, resulting in a series of gradient paintings’ (Rothko's I ‘use color merely an an instrument’ quote is also referenced later in her statement, and his work appears to be a direct influence on the series).

Beyond the coincidental timing of its discovery, the work is interesting in sense that it almost exists as an inversion of my own ‘Rothko’ gradient experimentations: while I have taken influence from physical paintings to produce digital work, Ditte’s paintings - while not explicitly defined as such (she refers instead to chromotherapy and American color field paintings) - bare an undeniable similarity to the sort of gradients we regularly encounter within apps and other contemporary digital media. I also couldn’t help but be slightly amused by the way many of her works have been photographed in the same ‘gallery photo’ trope that I have used as the basis for my own self-referential ‘gallery’ works, particularly the recent Rothko gradient experiments (indeed if you viewed both works from a distance and squinted a little it might be hard to tell one persons work from another’s...).

I remember a few years ago when DIS Magazine attempted to subvert this dominant style of art documentation at Frieze London by staging photographic set pieces in front of a variety of works on display as part of their coverage of the fair. The shoot proved to be controversial after it ended up drawing the ire of the Gagosian Gallery, who (DIS speculates) objected to the depiction of the cleaning staff working in front of their booth, and refused permission for the image to be shown. This lead to a counter response from DIS critiquing not only the Gagosian’s position, but also the wider art world’s desire to ensure that those working to ‘keep up appearances’ of show spaces etc should remain invisible:

http://dismagazine.com/blog/37430/may-the-unnoticed-remain-so/ 

While I think this was definitely a just and perceptive response (as my 8 year old comment under the article will affirm!) I can’t help but feel that - looking back - DIS’ work is susceptible to its own critique: specifically with regards to the agency of the cleaners who feature in the photographs. Were these willing, consenting participants in the shoot, or were DIS themselves complicit in an act of exploitation here? While DIS’ response was undeniably righteous, it doesn’t name or attempt to further humanise the cleaning staff that they are supposedly advocating for, beyond linking to their website (without adding further context) at the end of the article. Instead, much like their roles within the photo, the article inadvertently upholds the notion of the cleaning staff as ‘pawns’ who’s role, in this instance, is used to bolster DIS’ critical alibi, but ultimately leaves them voiceless - or maybe to use DIS’ own analogy - ‘invisible’, within the context of a debate which is ultimately centred around their presence.

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Bringing It All Together

I didn’t expect to be at the point where I was ready to begin developing my Word Association page just yet, but I figured since I’d managed to at least outline a visual identity to start unifying my work it would be fun to start to visualise how a site with all the work collected on it might ultimately look.

http://wordassociation.contentaware.surf/ - I have purchased the actual wordassociation.gallery domain, but want to keep it on here during the developmental stages.

There’s no ambient sound etc on the site at the moment - I’m kind of conscious the kind of continuous sound I want on the site (which would remain constant and not reset when new pages are loaded) is a little beyond my technical scope at the moment. The plan is basically to get everything online to the best of my abilities, then get a more pro web developer to do the finishing touches - since I’m generally using pretty simple HTML/CSS it shouldn’t cause any problems in terms of someone else needing to unpick some eccentric/subjectively coded Javascript (hopefully at least!).

I also managed to build a ‘blog’ page by reconfiguring some of my earlier experiments at building a ‘Text Wall’ into a tumblr theme - I actually liked this a lot more as a ‘blog’ (or maybe rather a ‘feed’) then as a fixed ‘piece’. 

https://wordassociationgallery.tumblr.com/

I think the idea of framing it as a feed establishes a certain fluidity which better suits the content - the text on the blog is meant to just be phrases I have heard or seen that had some sort of lyrical resonance that l felt impulsively compelled to log, but aren’t necessarily part of a wider context beyond that (existing almost a code based equivalent to my ‘texistential crisis’ photo project) . 

In fact I like the idea of being open to a certain fluidity to the pieces on the site more generally: I think the site itself should exist itself as a living piece of art in itself (similar to say, mouchette.org etc), which necessitates a degree of uniformity to the work shown on it - hence the need to establish some sort of coherent visual identity. However, I am open to the work being reconfigured when shown in different contexts, such as part of online group shows for example. Although there are some of my previous works on here that I’ve remixed, that is not to say that they are necessarily any more ‘final’ than their previous iterations - there’s really no final versions as such, just context-specific variants. One of the real strengths of text orientated work is the ways in which it can be transposed - we see the texts from Jenny Holzer’s work, for example, continuously being applied to different surfaces and contexts (T-Shirts, projections, LED’s, typeset printed etc), and the flexibility of working with code really lends itself to a similar sort of approach...

Overall though I’m definitely happy with the general appearance and identity of the site, I tweaked some of the rules proposed in my last post, but overall the idea of using gradients to create a point of contrast with the text content remains. I think the most important thing about the look is that it’s discernibly digital without being overtly kitsch, and I think the minimalism of the design really helps to this end. The plan now is really just to keep creating and adding new work before migrating to the final domain, at which point... the networking begins!

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Signature Styles

Another thing that came up in the final tutorial with Jonathan was the idea of feeling that my work is almost there, but not quite. This isn’t the missing 1% referred to in my critical evaluation, which is more about introducing my work to the world, but rather a achieving standard of presentation that feels conceptually coherent and instinctively satisfying. Something which lends a uniform quality - or signature style - to my work. I deliberately didn’t want to focus on this until I felt 100% satisfied with my process and methodology, because (from experience in other areas of my working life) I can have a tendency at times to get lost in designing a style at the expense of developing everything else. However, I feel I’ve reached the stage now where I am comfortable enough with the ‘art’ side of things to now add in some final touches of design... 

The idea of having a ‘signature style’ is often particularly significant within the context of traditional text based art. In fact, it could be argued that the work of John Giorno, Christopher Wool, Ben Eine etc is as much (if not more) rooted in graphic design and typography as it is in ‘art’. My goal though is not to create something as stylised as these artists - for reasons of both taste and necessity (the div based structure of CSS/HTML requires a degree of simplicity to ensure sufficient flexibility re. screen sizes, web safe fonts etc). I am looking which, (firstly, and most importantly) I feel intuitively connected to, that is light, minimal, discernibly digital, and - going back to discussions with Jonathan re. online presentation at the start of COVID - ideally lends itself to being photographed (or, in my case, screen grabbed).

I had naturally experimented with a variety of approaches in my work already, although up until now this had mostly been a secondary concern, so to be more consciously critical of what I was making I set up a private Instagram account to reference how the work would look on there as well as in the browser.

Focusing on the ‘canvas’ based work, which, since its static, best lends itself to a photographic ‘reproduction’  I began the process of uploading screenshots of a variety of coded design iterations onto Instagram - you can pretty much see the chronological development of the design process as the posts run from bottom to top. 

<grid>

One thing I was immediately pleased about is the way everything looked laid out in a grid format - I felt purely on a design level the was compelling structure to the composition of my photo’s and their embellished ‘digital gallery’ format.

I definitely liked the style of having single color text and border on a white background, but felt that it was slightly too ‘graphic design’ and not internet enough for me to connect with. 

<border pic>

Eventually, after various experiments with block colors I settled on a gradient style. Initially I was a little wary of using a gradient - they’ve become almost so embedded in the language of commodified digital - and particularly app based visual culture - that they make you think of a loading screen on an iphone or something. For some reason though I found that by basing the gradient on an opacity transition, rather than a color to color gradient - it gave it a much lighter touch - like diffused light or a very soft shadow that felt like what I had been looking for, and worked online and as a screenshot.

<gradient pic + web links>

I composed a simple rule in order to allow a flexibility in terms of which colors could be used - lighter color backdrops using black text with the gradient lightest in the middle, and darker color backdrops darkest in the middle but with white text. 

https://contentaware.surf/october/gallery13.html

https://contentaware.surf/october/gallery7sun.html

Once I was satisfied that this was what I wanted I began transposing the style to some of my other works...

I’d already resolved that the typewriter pieces would return to a full screen presentational style due to problems with web page scaling showing landscape orientated work within my gallery setting (the ‘screen’ gets further from the floor as the page gets narrower). In order to make the moving text visible I made it bold and removed the italicisation (the font itself is still Helvetiva however), which I felt worked really nicely on both my No Updates piece

https://contentaware.surf/october/noupdates/noupdates4a.html

And on Internet Time...

https://contentaware.surf/october/internettime/time2.html

to the extent I felt very happy that I’d managed to acheive a visual language that met my initial criteria in terms of being, minimal, distinct, and inline with my  personal visual sensibilities, while also being flexible enough to be applied to a number of digital modes of presentation. I think in many ways resolving this aspect of my work marks the end of my developmental stage... all that is left now is to ‘remix’ my other pieces and into this new format and begin the process of building the gallery that will house them (while continuing to make additional works in my pre-established formats), as well as building the social pages to promoted the project, and finally... to turning my relationship with my work from being purely instrospective and inward looking to becoming alive and connected to the wider world...

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09/10/20 Tutorial - additional notes/Rothko

When talking through some of the work pieces on my blog during the tutorial one piece got a little more attention - my digital Rothko approximation - than anticipated. Even though, as referenced in my post about the piece a the time of making it, it is almost the antithesis of an actual, vast and physically absorbing Rothko painting, Jonathan made an interesting point with regards to the ways the colors seem to move if you stare at it for long enough.

This made me think if I could potentially build on this cue to try and draw out the immersive qualities of the ‘painting’ in a way which might build on the pieces relationship with an actual Rothko...

I decided to experiment with ‘taking it off the wall’ and making it a more immersive viewing experience:

https://contentaware.surf/october/newrothko.html

&

https://contentaware.surf/october/newrothko2.html

All of this is code with no pre-made graphic elements. First link has some subtle (and slightly buggy) hover interaction and for the second one I filled the top div (basically, the pink box) with blue text which I then blurred to give the impression of a Rothko-esque paint layer.

I then realised that the ‘Rothko’ effect could be approximated more simply using a single div element with a gradient (rather than one acting as a container).

This opened up the possibility of having a wall hanging version:

https://contentaware.surf/october/gallery11.html

... but also, if you clicked the painting you could then go to an immersive version...

https://contentaware.surf/october/galleryroth2full.html

One thing we talked about in the session was the possibility of having a variety of presentational possibilities with my work. My focus has been on grounding the work in an online presentation format - which is a way of showing that I feel most comfortable with - but also being open to physical presentations of the work as a secondary means of showing it.

In this case for example, the ‘immersive’ version of the work could be presented on a large screen in a gallery place, or even be transformed into a print (just print web page, so long as the dimensions are correct it should naturally fit on paper). Regardless of whether the Rothko idea is something I continue (and really this is more of an experimental project since I want to focus on text) - I think being able to print make ‘full prints’ of the ‘canvases’ shown in the gallery offers an additional outlet for physical presentation that I would definitely like to explore in the future...

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Tutorial with Jonathan 9/10/20

Having spent much of the past few weeks annotating my blog and giving context to my work over the past year or so, having to opportunity to verbally ‘present’ it to Jonathan was really useful - hearing it all spoken about ‘out loud’ reassured me that there had been a cohesion to my decision making and a solid logic to my conclusions. Over the two hours a *lot* of ground was covered, including a fairly depth examination of the reasoning for moving my work online, and the ways in which it is intended to be contextualised within -and serve as a critique for - contemporary internet culture, rather than existing as a kitsch retro anomaly (particularly with regards to assessing the theory behind Hauntological pieces such as ‘Internet Time’ and ‘No New Updates’). I was also able to expand a little on my ideas for developing the Word Association gallery with regards to the audio aspects etc, as well as to consider what the final evolutions are for my work before moving more deliberately into seeking presentational opportunities.

Perhaps the biggest takeaway from the talk was the discussion around the ways in which the process I have established through the course - specifically drawing from archival source material to develop or re-contextualise - has impacted me beyond my artistic practice...

Although I have occasionally mentioned my ‘real life’ job running a fashion store/archive on this blog here and there, I’ve mostly preferred to keep things focused on my art work. However, talking with Jonathan it was useful to reference this more specifically in terms of showing how holistic the process I’ve built over the course has become in terms of influencing my ‘work’ beyond just the art side of things. This is something that, over the courses duration I had tried to pre-empt at various points, which ultimately ended up resolving naturally (and in an unexpected way) once I stopped trying to force it.

Pre-covid, I was spending a lot of time photographing clothes in the studio space, and there are many instances on the blog where I’ve speculated on ways in which I might be able to incorporate photography - and even the use of the studio itself - into my art working process. With so much of my working in Unit 1 focusing on photographic media, this instinct is understandable, however, what I’ve come to understand - particularly over the last few months (again, as is alluded to throughout my posts and symposium), is that the deeper commonality the two practices share is not photography per se, but rather their connection to, and interpretation of, archival material. Understanding this has allowed me to develop my work/art as parallel (rather than converged) practices which exist independently but nonetheless continuously inform and contribute to the development of the other.

As discussed with Jonathan, this is not to say that my art work is *completely* absolved from the influence of photography: Although it has been helpful for my personal development to reject ‘post-photography’ as the banner under which to locate my work, a variety of photographic references continue to endure, and re-emerge (almost subconsciously) in my work. A good example of this would be the way the gallery design for my ‘canvas’ pieces such as Yellow is informed by the format I established for the photo shoots on my fashion archive Instagram page, which also serves as an illustration of the ways the two practices inform each other. 

On the other side of things, as my artwork has become less ‘curatorial’ in nature the strategies I developed earlier in the course of grouping, ordering and giving context to images actually began to take a much greater significance through my fashion archive Instagram page. Although it initially began as a relatively simple store page posting product images, it has grown to become more of curatorial space for specifically grouped archival fashion imagery (whether print based or clothing). This shift that has seen a notable shift in terms of growing the pages audience, and, in a strange turn has attracted the attention of people who have influenced my art practice, with people such as Mark Leckey, Parker Ito and Nik Kosmas of AIDS 3D following the page (hopefully I am able to achieve similar when I set up my actual art one!).

Following the tutorial and reflecting on all of this, one thing I’ve begun thinking about a lot is the possibility of undertaking on an additional self-directed project, specifically starting an ‘archive’ themed podcast. This could involve discussions with people from various archive related disciplines (for example, people behind archival projects such as wayback machine, people working to preserve historic online works, or people who work in the archive department of a fashion house etc etc), with the hope that my own work and research familiarity with a cross section of archival practices would put me in good stead for leading some interesting conversations (with the secondary benefit of potentially providing me some useful networking opportunities). For now, the short term goal remains as discussed, to get my Word Association gallery up and running, but some long(er) term food for thought anyway...

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Critical Review

For many years, developing a process and methodology for ‘authentic art making’ had been a puzzle I was unable solve. Despite having a deep desire to create, my previous attempts at building on this impulse amounted to little more than a series of disparate side projects - the folly of an art director frustratedly seeking expression beyond the limitations of commercial work.

The two years of the MA have not only provided a welcome interjection to this cycle, but also a contextual framework for a committed exploration of this instinct. After 2 years of study, I feel I am exiting the course with the puzzle 99% completed. The missing 1% might imply a failure of sorts, but this couldn’t be further from the truth - I have found both a context and a means for my artistic expressions. All that remains is to embrace these resolutions and ‘become an artist’.

I entered the course with interests in post-photography, text based artwork, and online culture. Although these interests persist, my understanding of the ways in which they intersect within the context of my practice has shifted significantly.

Initially I centred post-photography at the heart of my practice, but came to realise in doing so I was operating from a comfort zone - my familiarity and confidence with the medium meant that I could utilise conceptual thinking to create something that looked convincingly like art, but - in terms of process - frequently left me frustrated an unsatisfied. However, through rigorous self reflection and a conscious retracing of my steps on my blog and research paper, I ultimately concluded that it was the archival properties of the internet that were most fundamental to my interests, and began restructuring my practice accordingly. With this point to anchor my other interests, I finally began creating a body of work that was authentically expressive, rather than simply a means to an end.

What then, are the next steps to complete the puzzle’s elusive 1%? In more abstract terms it is embracing the notion that I am ‘an artist’ - socially, professionally and internally - something that I previously felt uncomfortable with that now feels natural and instinctive. In more literal terms it means developing my online gallery as outlined in my ‘Exhibition Plans’ post and beginning the process of introducing the project to the wider art world - networking online, developing a social media presence for the work and submitting proposals to contextually relevant galleries. With regards to personal development, I intend to take a course on Javascript and the HTML canvas, which I feel will be significant in terms of maximising the presentational possibilities of my work.

Finally, I also hope to develop my writings around the internet and digital culture more formally on a new, public blog which, combined with my artistic output, is something I hope will establish a credibility that will lead to possibilities for guest lecturing and participation in public talks and discussions around these issues.  

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Project Proposal 3.0

Aims:

The aim of this project is to produce an ongoing body of work that is unified by a process that begins with a Debord-ian ‘online dérive sessions’ (in the spirit of 00s internet ‘surf clubs’) and ends with the creation - and publication - of online web pages which respond in some way to the material encountered during these explorations. A specific focus for both the ‘discovery’ and ‘realisation’ ends of the process will be on text based material (although I will also be setting up various outlets for more image based pieces), with the hope that the work created might contribute to creating a new precedent for web based ‘text art’. Additionally I aiming, through my work, to propose set of new, definably digital textures for text art in general which can often be rooted in traditionalist methodologies of screen printing, pen and ink and - more (relatively) recently - sculpted neon and fluorescent lighting tubes. The ultimate, long term, goal of the project will be to develop an immersive online studio/gallery space to host my web pages, with the idea that this digital space and the web pages hosted within it, will be inextricably linked as an embodiment of a singular, ongoing ‘work’.

Context:

Over the last 25 years the intense commercialisation of the internet, particularly in terms of ‘online making’, has seen the visual identity of the web shift from being defined by amateur experimentalists to design professionals. Rather than being individually expressive and autonomous, websites adhere to a set of design conventions and standards that converge under the (continually optimised) banner of ‘best practice’. Even when platforms such as Wordpress or Tumblr offer users the option to ‘customise’ themes etc, these parameters are strictly controlled to remain within these said boundaries. While this has had undeniable value in terms of maximising the accessibility of the web (particularly as we increasingly experience the internet through mobile devices), it has rendered our ‘experience’ of the internet as being mostly singular and homogenised. Influenced by Derrida’s idea of Hauntology (as outlined in his 1993 book ‘Spectres of Marx’) and perhaps more specifically its interpretation by Mark Fisher (notably in his ‘Slow Cancellation of The Future’ lecture) I am interested in whether this apparent ‘rut’ can be circumvented by re-examining past manifestations of the web to see whether it might be possible to speculate on an alternative future for our online expressions and experiences. In literal terms this means exploring the ‘old web’ and creating new online works which respond or engage with my discoveries in various ways. It is my hope that by reflecting their ideas, attitudes or aesthetics, viewers will be invited to consider the way in which these ‘old’ ideas intersect, or could be used to critique, todays homogenised online experience, as well proposing - via these ‘hauntings’ from our past - possibilities for reimagining it entirely.   

Objectives

- To establish a regular, conscious ‘dérive’ web browsing habit and document my finds.

- Identify portals and develop browsing strategies that will allow for the exploration of old, web 1.0 sources.

- To develop fundamental HTML/CSS coding skills and establish a basic understanding of ‘under the bonnet’ web and server technology that will allow me to produce and host my own websites from scratch, without the use of standardised design libraries or templates.

- Utilising these self-taught ‘amateur’ strategies to create works that question the ‘professionalisation’ of both contemporary internet art and the web in general.

- To propose ways in which ‘Text Art’ might be considered within the context of online presentation.

- To prototype and develop plans for a conceptual online ‘gallery’ space that will host and contextualise my work within a singular evolving project and establish a coherent conceptual identity for my project.

Methodologies

As outlined above, my process will beginning by exploring Web 1.0 sources via archive.org, various Geocities archives and other portals to develop an understanding of the psychology of the ‘old’ web and to find source material that can be used a the basis for new internet based works. In terms of actual production of these works, I will be teaching myself HTML and CSS (and, longer term, Javascript) to allow me to code web pages from scratch and ultimately present them online.

This will be supplemented by research into artists and galleries whose core focus is on exhibiting work online, as well as actively seeking out the work of artists who create text based works through digital (if not online) mediums. Finally, my blog will be an important outlet for regular themed writings on the the ways in which ‘the internet’ defines the identity of, and gives context to, online media (and specifically net-based art work).

Outcomes:

- Develop a series of online works with an emphasis on experimental, text-oriented in response to my explorations of the ‘archival internet’.

- Maintain a regularly updated blog (or series of blogs) to document incidental curiosities from my ‘surfing’ explorations, as well as providing an index of possible inspirations or source materials.

- Devise plans for a conceptual online gallery space to create a coherent identity and context for my work.

Workplan

In terms of the making process, I plan to spend every Tuesday undertaking my web browsing sessions and conducting other research, and dedicate every Wednesday to coding and making. The plan is to begin coding web pages from the beginning and learn as I go rather than to pursue more formal, exercise based learning experiences. Because the presentation of the work is designed to begin and end online, each piece should effectively be considered as being ‘ready to be exhibited’ once posted online to allow for participation in any of the shows (including the final show) which will occur during the duration of the course. However, when exhibited as individual works they should be considered as ‘previews’ or singular components that will eventually be contextualised within my final gallery space. Due to limitations of time it is likely that my Gallery Space will not be completed until some time after the courses conclusion - possibly as long as 6 months to a year after - so the plan in the short term (i.e the remainder of the course) is to continue developing new pieces as a means of establishing the technical framework and conceptual language of the works that will ultimately be housed within it.

Artists and online projects and exhibition spaces I will be researching for this project include:

Artists

Rafaël Rozendaal - https://www.newrafael.com/

Olia Lialina - http://art.teleportacia.org/

Tony Cokes - https://www.greenenaftaligallery.com/artists/tony-cokes

Petra Cortright - https://www.petracortright.com/hello.html

Kari Altman - https://karialtmann.com/

Jan Robert Leegte - https://www.leegte.org/

Cassie McQuater - http://www.cassiemcquater.com/

Everest Pipkin - http://everest-pipkin.com/#

Zak Loyd - http://1990-1997.com/

Online Gallery/Community/Project Spaces

HTML Only - https://htmlonly.tumblr.com/

Upstream Gallery - https://upstream.gallery/

Is This It? - https://www.isthisitisthisit.com/

One Terabyte of Kilobyte Age - https://oneterabyteofkilobyteage.tumblr.com/

Restorativeland - https://restorativland.org/

Neocities - https://neocities.org/

Bibliography

Capitalist Realism – Mark Fisher

Society of the Spectacle – Guy Debord

Notes on Society of the Spectacle – Guy Debord

The Spectacle 2.0, Reading Debord in the context of Digital Capitalism – Marco Briziarelli and Emiliana Armano

A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia – Gilles Deluze and Felix Guattari

Internet Art - Rachel Greene

Specters of Marx - Jacques Derrida

Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle – Chris Hedges

Camgirls, Celebrity and Community in the Age of Social Networks – Theresa M Senft

A Networked Self – Zizi Papacharissi

The Pictures Generation 1974 – 1984 – Douglas Eklund

The Death of the Author – Roland Barthes

Art in The Age Of Mechanical Reproduction – Walter Benjamin

Advancing Digital Humanities: Research, Methods, Theories – Katharine Bode and Paul Longley Arthur (eBook)

The New Uncanny – Jerry Saltz (Essay)

The Accidental Audience – Brad Troemel (Essay)

The Accidental Artist – Ryder Ripps (Essay)

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Exhibition Plans

Although I have my contentaware.surf site for my more experimental image based work, my plans for exhibiting professionally are centred around the development of a new site called wordassociation.gallery, which will focus on my text based pieces. The past 2 years of the course have affirmed my lack of connection with time specific/white cube/object orientated shows while boosting my instinct for sharing work online. Online presentation resonates with me for a number of reasons: in terms of acknowledging my critiques of capitalism that have underpinned many of my projects, it offers accessible, unrestricted viewing of the work outside of the traditional gallery system which is inherently tied to the object/value systems of the art market. Additionally, I have resolved that ‘digital’ does not only indicate a process of philosophy that is inherently tied to my work, but also a very specific (pixel) texture - like paint or charcoal - that affirms my personal connection to my pieces, which I simply wouldn’t get from say, printing them out. This combines with my discovery of ‘net art’ and online based art experiences being fundamental to triggering my instinct for making art in the first place, something which hadn’t occurred from numerous visits to galleries etc in the years preceding. Reminding myself of this was ultimately the revelation that proved to be the biggest catalyst for developing and advancing my work during the course - making my decision to show online not only ideological and practical, but also personal.

In terms of actual specifics wordassociation.gallery will be an online gallery space of sorts, with works ‘hung’ on it’s walls as can be seen here, here and here. These works might be animated and embellished within approximations of screens, or exist as static canvases. Once a work has been observed you can click the ‘presentation box’ (ie, the work) to move to the next piece (essentially a more advanced version of my ‘crystals’ work). While ‘in’ the gallery there will be ambient ‘gallery space’ sound playing continuously (like this) to amplify the sense of contradiction between a viewing scenario that is both meta and immersive, with this sense of hyperreality hopefully creating an experience that is unique and engaging for the audience. As an aside, the meta component of viewing the work embellished within a ‘gallery’ setting (rather than full screen) is not so much an attempt to create an experience that is analogous to a physical space, but rather to acknowledge the playful, deconstructive and often self referential nature of net art (and its relationship to ‘real art’), which - somewhat ironically - defines this type of presentation as being fundamentally ‘internet’ in its approach.

There will also be an option for visitor to toggle between ‘day’ and ‘night’ viewing experiences (as we see on many of today’s contemporary digital interfaces, such as phones, twitter etc), with the default toggling relative to the time of day being visited. ‘Day’ being the white wall/grey floor set up seen in my existing pieces, and night being a darker, spotlit version of the gallery space, with quieter audio. Because it is the site as much as the pieces contained within it that effectively functions as the ‘work’, I want elements like this to cultivate a sense of ‘performance’ to the art experience - that is to say their additions are principally gestural in nature, rather than practical.

Longer term I am also considering using the domain wordassociation.studio as a means of showing singular pieces, previews or works in progress (using the same basic layout but with environmental tweaks, ie studio sound, no night mode etc) - while the gallery site would show a completed series as an ‘exhibition’ (almost like the relationship between an artists blog and a website).

In terms of authorship, I would be operating anonymously under the name ‘Word Association’. I selected the name as it can be interpreted in a multitude of ways, as the ‘people’ or group behind the site, the name of the space itself, the ‘brand’, or as a descriptive term for the process behind the works (which is principally rooted in contextualising words). Conversely I feel working anonymously (and somewhat ambiguously) allows me to not only be more conceptually concise, but also more personally expressive, as well as allowing me to explore other different (and likely also anonymous) self-standing independent projects which might seem confusing if put together under a single name (or force a compromise on each for the sake of maintaining a singular coherence).

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Digital Directory

In order to get my recent web page experiments online it was neccessary to purchase some web hosting. Previously I’ve just used tumblr to upload and test my coding experiments - there’s a ‘customise’ option on the back end for users to edit the html of their themes, so I usually just delete all the tumblr code and paste my own in and your web page will run as normal. This method is fine for single page tests but obviously totally impractical for managing a variety of webpages under a single domain, so I took the plunge with a siteground hosting plan having read good reviews about their customer service and performance. What’s striking about viewing things from the ‘back end’ is that websites really are just file directories - you kind of assume there’s some sort of mysterious alchemy going on ‘behind the curtain’ (maybe there is with php systems?), but its basically all just a hierarchy of interconnected folders and files like you would have on a desktop. I’m using my new domain contentaware.surf to link to my pieces that are in some way connected to my surfing explorations - whether that’s open ended blog based like the Netscape Navigator project, or work that is responding to my finds in a more singular way. I like the idea of treating the home page as a creative component in itself and have already gone through several experimental iterations of mine - it’s quite fun in the sense that the function and content are already predetermined (it exists to link to the pages on the site which I have made) so you can just play with the form without it necessarily needing to function as a ‘piece’ (while still being part of the identity and architecture of the site). I think having a ‘revolving’ home page means that I can have a practical way of trialling new techniques or coding ideas in a way that adds a tangibility (and a final, online, destination for them) that I wouldn’t get from following ‘how to’ learning exercises offline. These have previously failed to keep my attention for long, partly, I imagine, because I’m not able to visualise how I would I apply the learning examples for my own purposes. This approach though creates a context that will allow for trialling and testing as I learn, which I think will be of real benefit in terms of keeping me committed....

[contentbew4re]

Speaking in Code

I’m actually surprised by the extent I’ve actually enjoyed coding over the past few months. It’s definitely something I have always wanted to do but found difficult to stick to due to the lack of tangibility about it all. As referenced in previous posts - coding is often seen to a means to an end, historically to build a website, although maybe apps etc might be a more common application now, but rarely as a means for creative expression in and of itself. My initial approach to coding was quite hack-y, I skipped the idea of doing any sort of formal beginner course and instead, armed with the some miniscule basics picked up customising tumblr themes, would just think of something I wanted to make and then work out how to do it - usually with a lot of head scratching, googling and general frustration until everything aligned for the veritable house of cards to all stay in place. When things come out correct first time, I’m usually completely shocked - even when I might be relatively confident that - in principle - I have inputted the correct code (although time and repetition have recently conspired to make this slightly more common and less surprising). Learning to code in general (even just for a specific area such as the web) is so vast and unending that it’s inevitable that most peoples knowledge will be quite subjective, and obviously until now, working to purpose, this has been extremely so in my case - yet there is at least some sort of relatively simple logic to CSS and HTML, so I wanted to see if I could potentially build on what I had taught myself and get a slightly more rounded understanding of the languages, so recently did the W3 Schools HTML and CSS courses. Generally, I was pretty happy with how much I’d picked up - although I might not have known every HTML tag or CSS variable, I could apply the logic I’d already picked up to get through it all without too much trouble. What this means is that not only could I build a ‘normal’ website without too much difficulty (god forbid!) and also that I can pretty much get my pages looking exactly how I want them... up to a point.

The missing part of my knowledge is really javascript and as my ideas are starting to get a little more ambitious I’m realising it’s something I’m going to have to start getting my head around. The particular aspect of Javascript I’m most interested in learning is the ways in which it can manipulate the HTML <canvas> tag. As the name suggests this allows for more specifically ‘art’ based coding possibilities (outside of the content orientated <div> structure of HTML/CSS). In a lot of ways it seems like a modern equivalent to Flash (looking through his code files it was pretty clear that a lot Rafael Rozendal’s early works had been converted from Flash to being HTML canvas based - presumably - on the formers imminent obsolescence), and is the basis for a lot of online games etc, but it also allows for ‘free hand’ drawing and relatively sophisticated animation functionality (my principle interest however lies in ‘painting’ backdrops for my text work to sit upon). As exhibited in my previous post I have been experimenting a little with canvas based Javascript coding , but I’m realising that the sophistication of Javascript relative to HTML/CSS is such that its not something that can be hacked together quite so easily so I’m starting to do the thing I’ve always avoided up until now and started with the basics (not yet of canvas based uses, but in general - the bare bones of its syntax). So far I think having a distinct application I want to be able to apply the code to has been a real motivator at least, but I’m being cautious not to get too ahead of myself and hit burnout. Submitting to the idea that I wont know everything immediately, and that a natural duration to learning is neccessary in order for things to stick, is a tough pill to swallow though still! At the moment I’m working from a book called ‘A Smarter Way to Learn Javascript’ which operates to the principle of 10 minutes reading and then 20 minutes of provided online exercises and tests, encouraging you to break/refresh after before coming back... so far so good... but still keen to get working on the canvas as soon as possible!

[contentbew4re]

Rothko and the Digital Canvas

Really just for fun, but I fancied putting my coding skills to the test to see whether I could create a rothko-esque digital canvas in my gallery space:

https://contentaware.surf/wordassociation/rothko.html

Obviously I am in no way suggesting that this has any of the qualities of a real Rothko (in many ways it is the literal antithesis!) but was a fun test to guage to what extent I am now able to visualise and then execute an idea through coding, and in that respect was pleased with how it turned out (definitely liked the different layers of color - particularly at the edges - within the blur). Not much comment has been made regarding my learning of code on the blog (principally the experience of learning is not necessarily something you would reflect on in the way you would a piece of art of a prospective idea for one) - but this is something I am pretty much learning on the fly with only very rudimentary prior experience. In many ways my work is still relatively primitive in appearance - there is nothing particularly flashy going on - but this is increasingly being born from choice rather than my own limitations. I do still like the ‘unprofessional’ web 1.0-ish minimalism vs javascript heavy contemporary web design slickness. 

One area I’m really looking to develop my skills in though is the HTML Canvas - which allows for advanced online graphics beyond the usual HTML/CSS tags (HTML canvas powers a lot of online games as a sort of replacement for the Flash sites of old, but also offers a lot of functionality for drawing and animating, which I think would definitely open up a lot of possibilities with my work. First point of call - inevitably - has been experimenting with writing text.

https://contentaware.surf/canvas/canvas/index.html

Despite the primitive appearance this was deceptively complex to achieve (for me at least) but does follow some of the principles that were covered in a coding workshop very early in the course. Because this kind of graphics coding operates to a pixel/grid principle I’ve invested in some grid paper to design future attempts in advance and map the co-ordinates accordingly, which will probably be a lot easier than just sitting down at the computer and attempting to to it from scratch. Ultimate aim is to be able to ‘draw’ or ‘paint’ onto the ‘canvases’ in my word association pieces, whether as foreground text or painted background texture - I think it will be good to be able to add something a little more ‘freehand’ into the work to offset the relative precision of using default CSS text/color styling.

[contentbew4re]

Word Association + New Work part 2

Despite the obviously synthetic ‘box shadow’ CSS effect used on my No New Updates work, I did like the approximation of 3D and the subsequent implication of ‘physical’ that it suggested. The box shadow was initially added quite absent-mindedly, as an experiment - but I liked the idea of making the work a little less ‘in your face’ and designing a context for it to exist within and began experimenting with static works:

https://contentaware.surf/wordassociation/gallery7.html

https://contentaware.surf/wordassociation/gallery9.html

For these I wanted to create the simplest digital approximation of an online gallery or studio, and present them almost photographically ‘in situ’. For some reason this was the first time I have ever been happy with static, text orientated work.

It’s definitely something I have been considering a lot recently - most specifically when I like the idea of ‘Text Art’ in principle but actually have quite an aversion to (a good example of the type of art I am referring to can be found here: https://www.instagram.com/textbased_visual_artists/). I think my problem is similar to that which I had to the ‘traditionalism’ of photography (at least of the Cartier-Bresson schoo)  - both are rooted in a very particular mid 20th century classic-ism: the textures and the aesthetics leave me cold. Part of my reason for embracing the ‘typewriter’ style internet works was because they felt contrary to this, with a digital texture and context that felt specifically familiar to me. In a sense, these new gallery/studio pieces represent a doubling down on these ideas. Somehow, by making the work digital and to an extent, slightly meta in terms of concept (they exist not only as digital, online works, but are situated within a a digital, online world via the gallery/studio space) I felt a lot more able to connect with the work. Perhaps this is ironic given that the work is effectively being moved a ‘step back’ in terms of its viewing, but I think I have learnt that often for me a comfortable position in relation to my work is one where I am able to ‘turn the volume down’ slightly in order to be better able to express myself....

This leads on to what is next. I’ve actually sat with these works for a week or so and intend to continue the series and further develop the concept: I am interested in developing an online gallery/studio space to exhibit my work - essentially a website with a studio section for works in progress and a gallery section to exhibit completed series of these digital text based works. At the moment the title of this project is ‘Word Association’, which I guess would effectively also be my artist name. This would suit me fine: despite being able to conceptualise a variety of different online presences I’ve always had some discomfort cultivating an online presence tied to my name. As I discussed very early in the course, a successful online presence requires a singular, relatively focused point of view and rarely rewards those who present themselves as real and multifaceted humans beyond our real life connections (which is what sites like Facebook is for). This is not an endorsement of these values, but for me I prefer to express my identity online through a variety of channels that each represent a singular part of my ‘real’ multifaceted personality. Not only has this been the most effective way of achieving online ‘success’ - its also been the best way of mutual online connections moving into genuine irl friendships. It’s a lot easier for people to connect with a clearly defined interest, passion or point of view than a presence which is more convoluted by virtue of being more ‘real’ (the flipside being it can become metaphorically like the birthday party where you have clearly defined friendship groups from work, school etc who have no mutual connections and might not get on!) 

So yes, this is where things are heading for now and will likely continue to head moving forward, so it might finally be time to update my project proposal!

[contentbew4re]

Word Association + New Work

wI’d been thinking a lot lately about different viewing modes in relation to observing text art. Not only do we read text, but - as I believe I have discussed on the blog previously - we also ‘look at’ text - and - as I have been more considering recently, we also ‘watch’ text. ‘Reading’ and ‘looking at’ both imply some sort of fixed, static media, with the latter perhaps being in some way more pictoral. However to ‘watch’ text - to me - implies some sort of movement or animation, and possibly a more relaxed type of engagement: in general we ‘watch’ the TV in a more relaxed manner than we ‘look at’ a piece of art; we need to be open to absorbing new transitions rather than being fixed on a singular frame. To watch is, to an extent, therefore relatable to ‘reading’ which is itself based on a similar principle of flow, but is ultimately a manually operated process and - by definition not a pictorial in the same way as we might interpret ‘watching’ media.

These different modes of viewing were in my head when I began undertaking some recent work. Firstly ‘No New Updates’, which could be considered in the same vein as Keikimo’s lament and my other ‘typewriter’ style web works.

https://contentaware.surf/wordassociation/noupdates/noupdates4.html

This piece is based on the final posts of Geocities blogs were users promised updates that ultimately never came. I was interested in the way these reflected a dramatically different pace of online expression to that which we experience today. Many users noted, and apologised for, a gap of weeks, month and even years between updates, whereas today we frequently updates a variety of our ‘sites’ (or rather, social accounts) as often as several times a day. There was a good quote on the new Netflix documentary ‘The Social Dilemma’ that likened the difference between this level of intensity as being between a tool or object kept in a shed we pick up once in a while, and an object in our pockets that constantly harasses us for attention.

Initially I had begun laying this out like my previous works in this style (Keikimo’s Lament, These Past Few Months etc) with a full screen presentation, but when I flicked between my testing tab and an online ‘concert’ (broadcast through twitch but embedded on a custom web page rather than directly via the twitch interface) I had running in another tab I was encouraged to try a different approach. I noticed how the video broadcast was coming from a window within a window - like the default youtube view - the viewing box didn’t take up the full screen, but existed within the context of the page it was on. While ‘full screen view’ is of course, a familiar way of 'watching’ media it was a reminder that it is not the only way we ‘watch’ online, and I was interested in the creative possibilities that might come from situating the animation within a context for example the possibilities of creating a digital space to experience the work within which could potentially be utilised to add additional layers of meaning or context to the work.

[contentbew4re]

Web Page vs Website

Came across this excellent interview with Web Art Pioneer Olia Lialina in a recent web-crawling research session.

https://networkcultures.org/postdigital/2016/02/25/interview-olia-lialina-20-years-mbcbftw/

Of particular interest was the following quote:

“Web culture has been changing all the time. When you search for ‘design trends’ or ‘top 10 design trends’ in a specific year, you will find lots of articles that describe these trends. But these trends were always related to graphic design, for example typography or color combinations, and rarely to structure or layout. And of course, everything that was not made by design professionals was ignored”.

Firstly, I agree absolutely with what she say’s - particularly in contemporary terms. The aesthetic of the web is defined entirely by these ‘design professionals’ who are themselves part of a movement to continually refine and optimise the web - developing and implementing best practices to ensure the slickest possible user experience. It’s hard to think that the reasoning for this isn’t fundamentally driven by capitalism. The web as we know it today has been designed to operate in an efficient, ‘businesslike fashion’, its reason d’etre seemingly to become so mechanised that it could almost be automated. All other possibilites, such as those proposed by those who are not ‘design professionals’ - particularly in the early stages of the web, has - in mainstream terms at least - fallen by the wayside, not only in terms of form (design), but also in terms of function - any approach that isn’t best serving the demands of capital, or seeks to exist on its own terms is largely rejected.

There are exceptions to this though: Rafael Rozendaal’s work, for example, might be a good example of this: https://www.newrafael.com/

His works are playful and seek only to serve themselves and fulfil their function as art pieces/artefacts/digital objects etc. But to a certain degree they represent an anomoly of sorts, even within the context of contemporary web art. A lot of work today seems to exist as a precursor to an app, or as a breakout project from someone that already works in a tech sector such as VR. That is to say, much of todays web art is made by - and almost defined by - the same internet professionals Lialina is highlighting in the quote above, and I believe it suffers greatly for it. The lines between app and art are just too blurred, and not enough work is being made by people whose relationship with coding begins and ends in creating art pieces (and, in am otherwise precarious time for the wider job market where coding is still able to offer potentially lucrative opportunities for employment, its not hard to understand why).

Personally, I am very keen to maintain my status as a non-professional, and restrict my engagement to code exclusively to art purposes . All this made me consider though, what is it exactly we are producing when we are attempting to resist and subvert the conventions of the contemporary web, particularly when adopting the role of amateur rather than professional? Instinctively I feel that it is not so much a ‘web site’ - which somehow feels imbued with the connotations of functionality and inherent ‘usefulness’, but a ‘web page’ - a blank canvas that we have utilised to our own ends to create an online installation of sorts. Self standing and singular, it has no pressure to exist within the context of a directory or serve any broader purpose to a wider site. Even though a big part of Rafael Rozendaal’s commercial strategy lies in buying the web domain so he can sell his work as sites, I feel in reality his work, as well as my work (and that of others approaching things in a similar manner) are actually producing ‘web pages’. These ‘pages’ themselves could be considered as distinct from the contemporary trend amongst web art to produce highly interactive animated or api based works - i.e work produced by internet ‘professionals’ utilising technology birthed from capitalist ‘progessiveness’ - which might better be described as ‘web apps’. This isn’t to say that pages, sites and apps cannot all comfortably coexist under the banner of ‘art’, I am just proposing that there is a distinct ideology that underpins each and that within these terms I see what I do as making ‘web pages’ - which is the area I believe the lineage of 90s net artists such as Olia Lialina is most traceable.

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Deeper into the archive

Even though I expressed an interest in taking my work out of ‘internet’ contexts in my previous post, I’ve actually found myself doubling down on the web based components of my work over these past few weeks.

When looking for content to base my web based works on one thing I frequently come across is old, unfinished and broken sites and pages. I’ve begun some new work approaching these kinds of pages as blank canvases to apply new code to - reminiscent in some respects to how a graffiti artist might look at a blank wall: filling broken links with new images, adding color and bringing unfinished an ambiguos content to life through new animations.

Here are my first attempts at this approach:

Source page: https://geocities.restorativland.org/Area51/Capsule/7040/

My new interpretation: https://contentaware.surf/basshair/index.html

(getting the .gif spread across those boxes was more tricky than you might think!)

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And also...

Source page: https://geocities.restorativland.org/Area51/Atlantis/8167/

New interpretation: https://contentaware.surf/lookingforsomething/1.html

(^ just draft for now as page is currently a little buggy and needs updating)

Like the ‘typewriter’ pieces these are essentially ‘installation’ pieces, principally designed to watch rather than to directly interact with (partly out of ease for physical presentation, which I’m currently thinking could be good through projection), although I’ve definitely caught the coding bug and am currently doing some online courses in how I might add some (subtle) interactivity to the pages and broaden the potential for deeper customisation of the code. As things stand, a big part of working with these pages is actually in reformating the existing code - which is mostly pure html (having been written, if not before the inception of CSS, then certainly before it’s wider adoption and popularisation) - to better allow for more advanced (in relative terms at least!) manipulation.

With that said though, and online project I have been enjoying recently is this ‘HTML Only’ initiated by Ryder Ripps https://htmlonly.tumblr.com/

Here users are forced to create pages using html only, and consequently without many of the contemporary CSS styling strategies which have become embedded in the contemporary canon of web aesthetics. As a project it seems to have been abandoned more or less as soon as it was started, and I think new iterations of CSS and HTML came out around this time so a lot of the coding seems dated beyond the nature of the project (even though a lot of the html tags used are deprecated - but still functional on most browsers - a lot of new html functionality has also been added since 2013 that could definitely have expanded the potentialities for these works). Personally I think the concept is still and interesting one and creating a pure HTML site is something I’d definitely like to attempt in the not too distant future - even using deprecated html tags and creating a site that could only be viewed using older browsers, and might slowly decay over time - adding a temporal quality to the work - could be quite fun.

Back to my reconstructive works though, I actually feel using old and broken websites as source material adds a conceptual component to my web based work that had been lacking up until now. Even though I’d developed an methodology of sorts (exploratory surfing, browser recitals of old, found text etc) and a process (fundamentally, working with code) I think having a distinct conceptual approach to truly embed this as a defined practice had been the last piece of the puzzle, and I feel quite satisfied with the reconstructing ‘broken pages’ approach moving forwards.

[contentbew4re]

New Work/‘The Archive’/Aesthetics

New work I finished today, ‘Hello World’

Riffing on the classic first coding exercise, writing HTML code to make the words ‘Hello World’ appear in the browser.

https://contentaware.surf/helloworld/index.html

In the piece the ‘Hello World’ phrase repeatedly appears in random colors, with a randomly selected font, at a randomised position in the page, gradually filling the canvas - ‘painting’ over each other - until the phrase itself is barely distinguishable amongst the mass of ‘Hello World’s’ that have accumulated on the page (I’ve set the page to auto-refresh, and consequently clear and restart the script, after 45 minutes). The loose concept is to not only represent the historical ubiquity of the phrase, but also to slightly reference how full the web is of ‘junk’ experiments, abandoned attempts to learn code, unfinished web pages etc, all occupying spaces on servers, somewhere. I’m pretty pleased with how painterly/almost ‘screen printed’ the page looks when it gets dense.

One general note about the aesthetic of these recent projects - I touched on it in the last post but I had considered whether or not to use a self referential ‘web 1.0′ aesthetic within my work. Although I’ve tried to steer clear of being overly kitsch, I did realise when working on the Keikimo piece (and considering how to make the work more distinct from Tony Cokes’ videos) that if the work is on the internet, there is little value in modelling the style on something that isn’t intrinsically at least influenced in some way by digital aesthetics (the style of the 2 pieces in the end of year show for example, probably had more in common with classic monochrome graphic design). That is to say, while the style of these works might not be overtly self referential, they have been designed to at least acknowledge - rather than deny - their inherent nature as digital/web based works.

This does not mean though that this well neccessary be a constant - although the web has been fundamental to these recent pieces, for me the interest is increasingly also (if not more so) in playing with the text as much as it is playing with code.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAkaT-vEwnI

This talk I watched recently was very instructive in its discussion of producing text based work that derives, in some way, from ‘the archive’ (in Holzer’s case, unclassified NSA documents). In my work, the archive of late has been old web pages - yet there is still room to produce a series that uses a different archive as its basis, and also to present work - whose content may have derived from the web - in physical offline formats (LEDs, books etc). In fact while I’m thinking increasingly about how some of these works will look on screens within gallery spaces, I’m also increasingly interested in how I might present them without the use of the web or even screens, breaking the connection with the content and the medium, rather than - as discussed earlier - convoluting it. I’m definitely curious how the text would communicate out of context (its source material more incidental), and whether it might seem, in some way, more ‘universal’ by moving beyond the slightly othered/‘eccentric’ web art category.

[contentbew4re]

New Works / Hauntology

Been deep in code working on a couple of new pieces lately. First is ‘Keiko’s Lament’

https://contentaware.surf/keikimotest/index.html

Its a continuation of the typewriter style pieces I used in the end of year show, but I tried to make it a little more visually distinct from the monochrome Tony Cokes text style pieces, and am pretty pleased where I got with it in terms of the bg effects etc. Coding is such an immersive process (for me at least) looking at it now (roughly a week after finishing it) it’s actually quite hard to remember how I got to this end point and also how I got it all to work together - you’re just sort of inside of it working away til it all makes sense and sort of ‘feels right’. At the time it can all feel quite instinctive, but once you leave it for a while going in ‘cold’ to make any extra updates - particularly large ones - is quite confusing - I think momentum is key to the immersion (starting with some small bits and then getting deeper in and getting a bit more capable/confident of experimentation as the momentum builds), so trying to do anything major without working up to it can be tricky. Technically I’m sure its still quite rudimentary - which has no bearing on the art value of the piece anyway - but I’m actually pretty happy with how my capacity for using code creatively is developing. 

The text is a verbatim copy of one of many Geocities ‘sign off’ posts following the Yahoo’s announcement of its closure. I thought the text was a really emotive analogy of the way we can give so much of ourselves (and even our lives) to a platform, yet are ultimately still at the mercy of corporate interests which often have no genuine interest in protecting or preserving the cultures that may have emerged on their platforms (yahoo are actually historically particularly terrible at this), and even how removed/disconnected they even are from this specific sort of culture in the first place. 

The second piece was based on an old blog post I found talking about something called internet time (converted from German so a bit of unusual phrasing here and there):

“By the way , you probably noticed a strange clock at the top of the screen ?! So, a new way of measuring time has been invented , the same for cyberspace and reality. This is Internet time, a new length of time called Swatch Bit. With Swatch Beat running, time zones and geographic barriers disappear. Swatch divided the virtual and real day into 1000 Bits, 12 days old is equal to @ 500 Swatch Bits. One Swatch Bit is 1 minute 26.4 seconds. You can safely “hammer the arrow” on the network with a friend from Australia or in a London bar on Swatch Beat: Internet time is the same all over the world, no one will be mistaken in calculating the time difference. Like this? Swatch created a new meridian in Biel (Switzerland). Biel Mean Time (BMT) is a universal reference for Internet time. A day in Time Online (@ 000 Swatch Bit) starts at midnight BMT (Central European Winter Time). Now they sayfor one Swatch Bits two non-Bits give.”

I been reading a lot about Hauntology since getting more interested in producing web based work - an idea proposed by Derrida (how the present is inevitably haunted by the imagined past and the future) but also very much woven into Mark Fishers idea about how capitalism has effectively cancelled the future (or at least our capacity to imagine it), so instead we frequently revisit aspects from our past which seemed to be proposing concepts that seemed genuinely ‘futuristic’ (useful ‘at a glance’ references: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSvUqhZcbVg&t & https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCgkLICTskQ&t). I came across the ‘internet time’ blog post while researching Hauntology and naturally it struck a chord, leading to another late night attempting to create an online ‘Internet Time’ clock. Was quite tricky mathematically as the ‘Beats’ of internet time do not correlate to seconds, but I checked it against the official Swatch internet time clock (and discovered the official registered name of ‘internet time’ is Biel Mean Time) and so far its been 100% accurate.

https://contentaware.surf/internettime/time.html

I tried to add ‘Internet Time’ or some sort of explanatory title to the web page itself but just found it detracted from the concept, although I think I’ll do something with the text that inspired it (as a separate page but part of the same ‘piece’) to develop it and add a little context. I think I’m at that point with these pieces where I’m starting to think a lot more about physical presentation of the work (beyond just viewing it online), and that was a real reason for the bright color choices in the internet art piece. I remember visiting a Tabor Robak exhibition a while ago and really enjoyed that sort of techinical/large screen presentation style in a minimal white cube space, and think that could really suit these 2 pieces. Obviously this sort of presentation is something I’ve been quite wary about before, but I’m at the point now where I’m getting a bit more confident with the work and am becoming increasingly interested in considering additional modes of presentation...