Hey, as long as Tom is mentioning me again (http://www.digitalmediatree.com/tommoody/?23146 and/or http://www.digitalmediatree.com/tommoody/?23964), thank you very much, (and BTW, I have found both of these posts extremely provocative, full ideas I've barely reckoned with in my work), please let me post the URL for my main weblog: http://chrisashley.net/weblog, which is a change since his posts.
Now, I wish I had something smart to say besides marketing myself, but it's late and I'm tired. So I'll say something I've been saying for the last couple of years: my weblog is a studio, a gallery, and an archive. My weblog gives me a regular deadline. I must produce. The work gets shown. It accumulates. I can easily look back at what I've done, pull it out and reuse or remake it. In my case, in particular, the drawings I make in HTML are embedded in each post, there are no other files. The page is the image. The material of my art is HTML, that of the web (well, somewhat; I don't bother with XHTML, CSS, layers, Javascript, etc., but you get the idea). I like HTML because it's simple, and easy to learn. It feels democratic, like basic literacy.
Having even a small audience for the weblog makes me productive in a way that sitting in my studio making things on paper or whatever just doesn't inspire. My weblog has acquainted me with artists with whom I engage in regular dialogue in ways that just wouldn't have been possible before. My weblog puts my production totally under my own control. I make it, I show it, I give it away, it has a public life.
I am surprised that I don't see more artists treating the weblog as an art medium, rather than as a more standard medium for writing in a journalistic, critical, or organizational mode. Am I missing them? And, I have to say, most photoblogs don't count for me as a use of the weblog as an art medium.
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Now, I wish I had something smart to say besides marketing myself, but it's late and I'm tired. So I'll say something I've been saying for the last couple of years: my weblog is a studio, a gallery, and an archive. My weblog gives me a regular deadline. I must produce. The work gets shown. It accumulates. I can easily look back at what I've done, pull it out and reuse or remake it. In my case, in particular, the drawings I make in HTML are embedded in each post, there are no other files. The page is the image. The material of my art is HTML, that of the web (well, somewhat; I don't bother with XHTML, CSS, layers, Javascript, etc., but you get the idea). I like HTML because it's simple, and easy to learn. It feels democratic, like basic literacy.
Having even a small audience for the weblog makes me productive in a way that sitting in my studio making things on paper or whatever just doesn't inspire. My weblog has acquainted me with artists with whom I engage in regular dialogue in ways that just wouldn't have been possible before. My weblog puts my production totally under my own control. I make it, I show it, I give it away, it has a public life.
I am surprised that I don't see more artists treating the weblog as an art medium, rather than as a more standard medium for writing in a journalistic, critical, or organizational mode. Am I missing them? And, I have to say, most photoblogs don't count for me as a use of the weblog as an art medium.
- chrisashley 6-25-2004 10:36 am