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The Work Shulgin's Desktop IS project elicited a great deal of discussion among the steering committee. Here is a minimally edited transcript of some of our comments. The Internet is a collaborative artistic platform, both verbal and graphical. These desktops say a hell of a lot more about the people than words. --rc It certainly raises interesting questions about "beyond interface" by so concretely using the most traditional HCI. I find myself responding a bit like I did when publishing documentary photography books. The photographs are in and of themselves interesting, enlightening, etc., but the conversation with the photographer about what s/he did/saw/heard in taking the picture is often even more interesting, enlightening, etc. In Desktop IS there is the sense of a lot of inside stories about the users, which may or may not be necessary to know to appreciate but is always fun anyway." --sd
The site with the "desk tops"... clever? YES, but after seeing it for ten minutes, it all becomes a one liner. I saw six desk tops, I got the idea, end of story. I had no more time, or curiosity, to look at all the rest. After all I wasn't interested in making a survey about all the idiosyncrasies that enter into people's minds when designing their desktops. One could get on a bus going from Mexico City to Oaxaca, and look at all the hats people wear on the bus, and come up with the same sort of arguments for it being "very interesting," etc. etc. After all these hats are very different from the ones that were used and made only a decade ago. With the economic crisis, no longer can people afford hats made out of real palm leaves, but instead some imitations that are made from plastic, of which there are many. So one could make all sorts of arguments for making a web page for hats ... on such a bus. SO WHAT!! I say. Unless you are into making surveys.
Lets' get real.... THAT is not art!! Is it? The more I listen to what
is being discussed as art, the more I feel like the kid who was saying
the Emperor has no clothes. I will gladly rectify my errant thoughts, if
someone could make an argument for why we should not demand to be "moved" by art on the net. After all, I still feel quite content with my
condition as a human being and have no desire at all to migrate into some
recombinant computer cum web net installation of sorts."
I think "desktop" works, simply, in that it examines the desktop as an inhabitable space, a place inscribed with a user's identity. To say that this piece is a one-liner is a bit harsh . . . the piece works because of it's repetition . . . let me come up with a simplistic yet pretentious analysis of the piece that you're gonna hate . . . The desktop is a crucial aspect of contemporary computer culture, in exactly the same way that, say, the phone was at the beginning of telcom culture. The desktop has sat there, a "blank" interface, for much of the history of computing, but we have gradually become aware of how it is charged with iconic meaning via GUIs and drag-n-drop interfaces. Like the phone, it starts to play a crucial role in our social and cultural lives--whether we choose a simple tone-dialer or a Dali Lobster phone is echoed in what backgrounds, icons and names we give to the items on our desktops. Viewing this intimate personal interface/space is like viewing the inside of someone's briefcase or home. How is it different from Sophie Calle photographing the contents of a suitcase? Now, with the way in which Internet Explorer 4.0 ports with Windows 98, the desktop becomes a crucial space where an increasingly corporate environment explicitly infringes on what has previously been a very intimate, personalized space. When Bill Gates argued that IE 4.0 was an integrated element of Windows 98, he essentially claimed the individual's desktop as a dynamic corporate space. Push systems like IE 4.0's CDF format "sell" broadcast space on user's desktops, as Pointcast does with screensavers. The desktop becomes a battleground for advertisers and content providers. In this context, the "desktop" project is a catalogue of personal identities mapped onto this intimate interface, at a moment when the nature of the desktop is about to be changed radically. I have absolutely no idea whether any of the above were considerations "desktop" was built to explore, but there you go, there's my two cents. What I like about it is that it explores the way we use these technological spaces, creating a context for net art within our own experience of computer culture. Olia Lialina wrote in her "cheap.art" posting Jan. 19, 1998: Developing a theory of its own could enhance the value of Net art. At the moment it is understood in the context of media art, of computer art, of video art, of contemporary art, but not in the context of the Internet: its aesthetic, its structure, its culture. Works of Net artists are not analysed in comparison with one another. We are always viewed from an external perspective, a perspective which tries to place native on-line art works in a chain of arts with a long off-line history and theory. And this remains the interest: to place us, to phenomenalise us, in the social sense of the word.I fear that your criticisms are, as Olia suggests above, not considering the works within the context of the Internet, but within the context of other, off-line art histories. --cl
Your analysis of the significance of "desktop" as a "crucial aspect of contemporary computer culture" is well taken. Is it important as a cultural manifestation of our present computer world? I would say it is, and so is probably the issue of garbage as well. A fascinating subject without doubt, but is it art? To elevate such subject matter to the category of art, is what I find the interesting point to discuss. So what does that lead us to?
Your sociological discourse is fascinating, important to discuss,
intellectually challenging... but it does not inspire me, it intrigues me.
Different kettle of fish altogether.
One difference, of course, is that while a garbologist or two might write a book about garbage of the rich and famous, Netscape/IE/HTTP servers examine our garbage (cookies) all the time, and data miners use that information both on a one-to-one basis and on an aggregated basis to significantly affect the culture(s) we operate in. Does this make it art? Not necessarily, of course, but I agree with Pedro that there are some interesting questions about whether net art suggests different ways to think about art. --sd
This type of project is yet one more in a string of others that have exploited the web platform as a method of collecting *other peoples'* ideas, images, favorite foods, and personal reflections.I personally am a little tired with net projects that collect anything from as many people as possible and then to go on to present them as a comment of the human condition - etc. The question here is whether "Desktop" manages to convince us that we are seeing this desktop with new eyes by juxtaposing all those desktops with one another and do its inner secrets reveal to us anything more than how easy it is to be a voyeur on the net, steal and hide other people's cloned works ... as a comment of the state of the net this is as good or as bad as all the others - but is it enough? --sh
"Talking of going through people's garbage--in 1993 (I think) Niels Bonde ran a project called "Recovered Files" which consisted of files retrieved from users' desktop wastebaskets--I found other people's garbage very interesting, and it moved me . . .
it [another project] didn't work *for me* because I like something more constructive, that
explores the technology, and it is that which moves me in net.art (as I
said earlier, something which changes my experience of net culture). . .
just as 'desktops didn't work *for you* because it failed to offer the
qualities you seek from art. Steve's original statement suggests that we
don't argue about the "genius" of artists, but attempt to contextualize
net art projects in some way. That's all I was trying to do with
"desktops"; not suggest that it is "genius" in the way it "moves me", but
to (very simply) contextualize the project.
In my original note on the M&W Web site about Beyond Interface, especially with the Sterling quote, I thought I was trying to suggest a forward time when distinctions between art and design and programming weren't as clearcut. In light of the conversation over the past couple of weeks, I think that's a bit utopian/naive (which I knew at the time and was somewhat intentional anyway), but frankly I'm excited by the kind of discussion being presented around Desktop. --sd |
For all the reasons I mentioned before, and also because this project will only become more significant over time. Mainly, I like it because it does point to how personalized and intimate a space the desktop has become at a moment when the desktop is becoming the future of net interfaces. It's not emails, avatars or homepages, the facades we throw up onto servers, that display our identity on-line--it's the desktop, the messy space we live in, that holds the elements of our on-line selves. --cl
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