Filtering the World Wide Web

Sunday afternoon 11 January the artists from Mostly It Happens At Night got together to talk a bit more about art on the internet. Maaike Gouwenberg invited artist Sander Veenhof and blogger Anne Helmond to present their work and talk about it with the public and moderator Lucas Evers.

Sander concentrated his presentation on his work and research on Physical Reality. He investigates the boundaries of new techniques and uses an experimental approach towards these techniques and towards art. During the presentation of his work he constantly explains the techniques and his unique approach. He mentions the great possibilities of the world wide web to reach a broad and big audience, but he underlines the difficulties to connect to larger networks with small art projects.

On the world wide web it's easy to interact for the public: easy interfaces are available. But, people should be aware of the ideas of the artists involved, believes Lucas. He wants to know how you can attribute more meaning to the presence of artists in this area, including interaction with the audience. Sander believes filtering of information is an important tool for clearing up this area for public and artists. Lucas mentions mapping as a means to create awareness and meaning.

Anne Helmond tells the audience a bit about the (short) history of blogging and her research at the University of Amsterdam on this subject. In the end the 'searchability' of a blog seems to be the most important element to get your message out there. Lucas Evers also observes the tendency of blog users creating content to be searchable by search engines. Blog users become aware of the searchability. Lucas wonders if the search engine is your new public? (Anne commends on this subject: 75% of your visits are bots.) Does a blog reach a broader audience? Does it reach the largest world wide possible public?

Quincy briefly mentioned the subject of authorship on the internet an the difficulty for artists to delete their work online. Loosing authorship after publishing artworks on Flickr or Facebook. Lucas agrees it’s difficult to determine who is the owner of the work after publishing on in internet. He advises to use a creative commons license to determine authorship.

Sander, Lucas and Anne agree on the importance of being connected to a network. This means you will have to be traced by ‘bots’, so blogs will write about it, such as We make money not art (curatorial blog). Sander emphasizes the involvement of people in your projects and trying to keep them connected to this on-line or off-line project.


Images: Performance by Lester