Empty Art for the Web

A web-enabled computer in a gallery, allowing visitors to browse the internet. A ready-made the information age.

Non-Metamer Monochromes

Monochromatic paintings have a tradition going back to the early 1900s, exemplified by Malevich and Rodchenko, and later by Rauschenberg.

I'd like to produce a series of monochromes that uses a single non-metamer. By non-metamer, I mean a color that has the same frequency spectrum as the color being replicated. For example, the green of a leaf, the blue of the sky, or the red of a sunset. Instead of just resembling these colors, various paints would be analyzed for their spectral response and mixed in the correct proportions so they precisely recreated these colors.

The Real and the Virtual

I'd like to create an installation using a standard multitouch interface. The interface would be approximately 1 m wide and fairly high resolution. It would be mounted in a table-top configuration. A small pool of water, of similar construction and equivalent size, would be sitting directly next to the interface. The interface would be running a water simulation that resembles the real water as much as possible.

Chocolate WTC

This sculpture is a September 11th, 2001 memorial, designed by C. Boym. As best I can tell, it was cast in nickel. The color and texture gives me a wonderful, terrible idea: why not use chocolate? You know, the same way we have chocolate bunnies? The target market could be Al-Qaeda. Or, perhaps it would be cathartic for those who are still recovering to take a bite out of the past.

I Am Sitting in a Google Ad

Set up simple web page with only the text of Alvin Lucier's famous composition, and Google text ads.

Visit the page, and take note of the Google text ads. Create a copy of the page, replacing Lucier's text with the text from the ads. Repeat this process indefinitely, or until Google starts repeating itself.

The Bucket Piece

At a popular contemporary art gallery in a large city, in a small white room, place a nondescript bucket on a centered pedestal with a single light above it. A guard is stationed outside, allowing only one person in at a time. Next to the bucket is a plaque reading:

At the end of the day, any money collected in this bucket will be given to the artist. You are free to add or remove money as you wish.

This is the most elegant manifestation of the piece, but a better manifestation will get others involved. For example, donating the money to a charity instead of the artist. Or multiple buckets going to different causes. Or some kind of system measuring the contributions in real time and reporting how many children have been saved from starvation for another day.

Full Inbox

As of this moment, Gmail offers 7365 MB of storage. To me, 7365 MB looks like an open desert, or a desolate sea. I want to fill that up, or at least craft it. What would email land art look like? What is the architecture of an empty inbox? And how can it be shaped toward an aesthetic or conceptual goal?

Every Every Icon

John F. Simon Jr.'s "Every Icon" iterates through all the 32x32 black and white icons at approximately 100 icons per second. Sintron's "God's Eye" iterates through all the 800x600 color images at 97,000 images per second. Jim Campbell's "The End" iterates through grayscale images using custom electronics. Leonardo Solaas' "Magic Mirror" iterates through every 720x576 color image at 25 images per second.

I propose a meta-Every Icon, "Every Every Icon". This work will include all of the above works, as well as any other variations that may be dreamed up in the future. It will accomplish this by iterating through every possible resolution, at every possible framerate, for every possible bit depth, in every possible order.

Privacy Art

Whenever you point your browser to an https page, or type your password into a box with asterisks instead of clear text, or see a small lock icon next to a form, you get a feeling of security. In these situations, a language of reassurance has evolved: lock icons, for example, tend to be golden-yellow or blue-gray. Unlike other icons, which are free to be multi-colored, locks have a restricted palette that has evolved to remind us of the physical objects, "real locks", that we trust from day to day. I propose work that takes advantage of these features in the collective net-unconscious. For example: an https website that promises to keep your data secure, while requesting only random pieces of banal information.

Indirect Indirection

Along the lines of Kopyfamo' (or at least sharing the aesthetic): use the various "this is a hosted image" images as profile/avatar images. Alternatively, collect these images and upload them to various image hosting sites. For example (Hosted on tinypic.com):

Energy Meter

Hack multimeter such that:

1. It runs off an adapter that plugs into the wall.
2. It senses and displays the current flowing into it.

An energy visualization that fulfills its purpose whether plugged in or unplugged. One of those near-paradoxes.