[artinfo] (browser as art work) Net.tv by Garrett Lynch
Garrett Lynch
lists at asquare.org
Sun Oct 29 18:52:36 CET 2006
Announcing the release of net.tv an art browser
(browser as art work) by Garrett Lynch:
http://www.asquare.org/project/net-tv/
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Net.tv is a cross between a browser and a
streaming media player designed to view the
internet as it really is, code or more
specifically markup, not a series of web pages
designed under a print metaphor. It makes no
attempt to interpret the code into an organised
layout as do conventional browsers, instead it
displays the code as an audio-visual stream of
indeterminate length.
Why reduce the internet to an audio-visual
stream? Simply to provoke thought around our use
and consumption of different media, linear push
media such as television and non-linear
interactive pull media such as websites, which
have been converging for sometime now. Net.tv's
purpose is to highlight the way we as users
continually construct self made narratives when
we use the internet through choices based on an
interact / react model. It does this by removing
our ability to chose and act on those choices.
Users enter a chosen url, click go and from there
on the experience of 'surfing' is automated and
dictated by a preprogrammed rule:
On start
{
retrieve webpage url entered.
Visualise webpage as an audio-visual stream.
Spider to first webpage url available on current webpage url.
Repeat while new url available.
}
When we use a browser to surf the internet what
we view and how we view it is controlled by the
browser. It functions as a framing mechanism and
for net.art this can be considered a problem or
challenge depending on your point of view. The
creation of a browser as a work of net.art allows
an artist to not alone create an artwork but
control how and under what conditions it will be
viewed.
"After the first experiments with web sites, the
browser rapidly became the unavoidable framework
for Net art [sic] in the eyes of the artists.
Webstalker, created by the London-based art group
I/O/D and introduced in the first part of
net.art, was the first 'art browser' to call into
question the conventions of representation on the
internet on a much more fundamental level than
any work on the web was able to. After
Webstalker, a whole series of art browsers
appeared...they show precisely what 'normaly'
browsers try to hide. Instead of Web sites with
pretty designs, one sees what lies beneth the
surface: the code the pages have been written in
and the structure of the Web sites appearing on
the screen as complex diagrams which most
definitely have their own aesthetic appeal."
(Baumgärtel, T. 2001)
By denying the user any possibility of
interaction with or control over browsing content
when using net.tv, the possibility to surf the
internet, the user is in fact denied the status
of user and becomes simply a spectator of a
broadcast medium much like television. Web pages,
net.art works themselves (including the artists
own) become input, the equivalent of a signal for
the browser, suppling a constant feed of content
which controls the browser and the path it takes
through the internet. Linking from page to page
or site to site is no longer a controlled or
chosen decision by the user. Instead the
application decides constantly spiraling off onto
new pages as soon as it finds a link.
Unlike most browsers which exist and are defined
by the content they depict, their message, the
internet as viewed / interpreted through net.tv
is no longer a source of information. It is a
browser which is viewed solely for its aesthetic
form, an abstracted composition of sounds and
images.
Net.tv is available to download for Mac OSX
10.2+, Mac OS 8/9 and Windows 98 / Millennium
Edition / NT 4.0 / 2000, or XP from the artists
website:
http://www.asquare.org/project/net-tv/
a+
gar
__________________
Garrett at asquare.org
http://www.asquare.org/
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