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I was editing a Lesson Plan for this upcoming week’s class and accidentally scrolled down to the end of the document. I think I flipped to another desktop before coming back to have this image staring at me. I thought at once, “This looks like architecture.” To a certain degree, I’ll give myself the benefit of the doubt and say that the design of a graphical layout is a kind of architecture, albeit a stretch of its definition.

But what captures my attention wasn’t so much the shape and symmetry of this end of document. It was the gaping blankness; it’s scarcity and pale dull virtual landscape. The buffer at the end of the page, it’s frame. The gray border formed around the edge of the page adds a margin to the margin. It’s formally unnecessary but aesthetically essential. The gray acts as a reminder that you have reached an ultimate end; beyond the page, and the paper, to a a vacuum space that can’t be written on. It’s occupies space as a reminder of the end users’ virtual limits and spatial confinements.

Below a sampling of a reusing old txt scrambling python to create some scripts for video sketches. There are nice elements that happen hear that I could definitely work with. I think in order to break away from past conventions, while maintaining the same style that has resurfaced in the sketches, I could benefit from a good script of nonsense.

Lines,
a gong’s mirror,
plastic doubted piano’s,
backdrops council shelter without snares.

I am shelter down,
45s against shadow doors,
I am dusty,
against small happenings,
on shelter back lines,
doubted old suns,
from what happened behind doors.

Today, I saw a link posted by Jon Rafman of a full screen quicktime video project whose origins are unclear to me. I imagined that it belonged to Jon, given his other recent web work. But the page source didn’t give me any clue of it’s author. Initially it reminded me of Martjin Hendriks’ 12 glowing men project, and other “newMedia” projects of it’s kind (ie fullscreen “web specific” flash/plug-in video).

After sitting on it for a moment, I came to this thought: Is this newMedia? Jon, a filmmaker and recent web based artist, might be approaching this work as participating in contemporary “newMedia,” but I hesitate in allowing these types of work as belonging to that category/classification. I wouldn’t hope to try and necessarily define a taxonomy of such a cannon, and honestly doing such a thing would be both hubris and foolish. However, what does necessitate a piece of web based media to be consider newMedia? Or webart? Or net.art? Or just Video?

I think the typical critique here is that these works are newMedia not because of their content, but because of their presentation; a self-contained URL. In a typical postmodern turn, our context (read presentation) forms our analysis. In everythingwillbeOK the association between text and image – URL and video – creates a space of interpretation; a similar type of subversion or play that can occur between painting and title.

But the association that happens in cyberspace is not the same as typical gallery settings (obviously). The piece cannot function without it’s URL. In this way, the URL is not only an identifier (like a title), but it is also its specificity allows its deployment/execution. The URL thus functions as the enabler; both giving it virtual content and context, as well as then adding another layer of poetry in the best of examples. Using a URL as both title and executor creates an interesting dynamic between agency and identity for me.

In this way then, the piece could be considered a type of critique, or else a musing on what it means to have URL content so prominent in the interpretation and digestion of a piece of art (or piece of media for that matter). The self-consciousness and deliberate delivery of everythingwillbeOK makes me consider the intentionality of pairing this video with this URL. It also goes without saying that the domain itself is quite a find, and that its simplicity and uniqueness reflect the video’s aesthetic and content. However, I don’t know if this is a “justification” for it’s classification.

Where does URL specific video or even any URL specific pieces of this type (such as Rafael Rosendaal’s flash based work) lay on the media arts spectrum? Does it get a “free ride” into newMedia simply because of it’s placement and context on the web? Or does it deserve a more acute definition/category due to its specificity and self-reference? Or can it simply be grouped as an extension of the pool of Video Art?

I suppose I bring it up because of having more wide concerns about the systemic problem that newMedia art goes through; namely that the system is defunct, and neglects many types of work (both virtual and physical/tactile). The limited scope of Media Arts as a cannon leave out important precursors/prehistories, as well as bolster our (that is Western) obsession with the New, regardless of it’s actual newness/innovation.

Made in Steve Ciampaglia’s Brand Hijack class @ marwen.