So it is a stunning interactive interface.
It beguiles.
It fascinates.
But is it art?

The Visual Thesaurus is a tool that accesses data and generates a visual representation of the data via Java applets (Maplets), as a method of visualizing verbal associations of meaning, in the exact same way as the traditional thesaurus guides us through these associations that is already so very familiar. As a commercial interface, it is first and foremost functional one and does not, it any way proclaim to be "art."

So where in fact is the border between an art experience per se and the underlying interface that governs it? Do all artists need to design their own interface? Can such an interface be the essence of an art experience?

We see a similar function in I/O/D 4: The Web Stalker

While Thinkmap presents itself as as data access tool, The Web Stalker purports to be a new form of web browser that dispels with the page metaphor of traditional browsers and presents urls as a series of circular lines that are the links. The Web Stalker relies on spatial references in much the same way that Thinkmap does and they are both refreshing visual distractions from the html series of links that we have become accustomed to on the web.

It is refreshing to find new visual metaphors of data interpretation of the web. In Beyond Interface, I feel that these two Web projects are doing just that. Looking beyond the surface of the web in order to redefine the building blocks of the networked environment, the raw matter that is part of the new interface.

Inevitably artist are seeking out new ways to interpret this new media, and they are at once victims and exploiters of the new digital currency that is becoming available to them. Most artists still need to hold hands with the engineers at this stage; the programmers that are absorbed in seeking out new environments, but it is the artist who will be seizing on these opportunities for their playgrounds that will then contribute to their own, original interpretations.

What then, as the viewer do we get out of this equation?

Does the new, dazzling aesthetic experience suffice as the reward of an art experience or do we demand that the designers need to announce the fact that we are witness to art to make it art?

I feel that these sites can still define art.net in spite of the fact that it may or may not claim to be art and that the reward that we receive in experiencing them, is parallel to the kind of experience that we now demand from our contemporary artists working in other art media.

Beyond Interface should incorporate exactly this kind of novel kind of work that may not be appropriate for a museum gallery and we should seize on these specific opportunities to show case these impressive projects.

The Visual Thesaurus accesses data from the WordNet database, a publicly available resource developed by the Cognitive Science Laboratory at Princeton University. Thinkmap is a powerful tool for displaying complex information. Thinkmap software animates data, creating stunning interactive displays that interface directly with databases and generates graphical representations of data, not producing static graphs, but rather Java Maplets, kinetic displays of multidimensional information that link directly to complex data sources.
--sh