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final votes and criticism
by russell pensyl
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Most of what we get on
the net is about the same level of interaction as what we get from
the other zushztechnologies of radio and television. What we do
not need is more crap being thrown at us without any ability to sort
through and select the things that we need or want to see and hear.
The potential of the Internet will be reached when content can be
selected by the user and not shoved at us as just another mass
marketing media.
The body of work done by this group is
uneven in quality and effectiveness of communication. As can be
expected from any group show the work will be all over the place and
here is no exception. It seems several took work from other projects
and submitted. Others did not read what the show was about at all
and others the work is so obscure and arcane I could find little
relationship the showy theme. I could not come up with seven piece
total as my final inclusion list. I only came up with five.
What seems to lacking from most of the group as a whole is
the real understanding of an interactive time based media can do.
That is that time passes and our experience of an event changes and
is affected by that passage of time. The most important thing I wish
we could all take away from the experiences that the event itself is
not the most important experience. Our memories will be clouded by
the event for a long time to come. Some (fortunately not I) will be
remembering the event or things surrounding the event and what they
had to experience in the succeeding weeks for the rest of their
lives through the missing of fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters,
sons, daughters, friends and colleagues for much longer than we
will. I wonder how these people would respond to the work presented.
Votes for 911
Suk Ran Ren Fah
I like the stright
forward presentation of the text. The artist/designer does not get
caught up in trying make it artistic. It is not sweet, sour but a
matter of fact presentation of and stream of events as experienced.
For me the work is about the human experience and the communication
among friends colleagues and/or aquaintances. It is not glorified,
overstated or artified. I want to read this stuff.
Eryk
Salvaggio
I like this piece a lot. I do not think it was
necessary to add the statement at the front of the piece. It is good
that he felt the audience might need a little context. However I do
not think they do. The piece communicates pretty directly and
requires no additional context. This piece (without the statement)
is my zaest of Showzselection. It is strong and evocative. It has a
seriousness about it that makes me want to pay attention to what is
being said.
Kristen Palana
Simple, understated approach
to presenting her experience of the occurrence. Kristen does allow
any artifice to seep into the work. She presents her experience in a
matter of fact straight forward approach that allows the viewer to
see what she saw that day take away what they wish.
Fabian
Giles.
This piece really make me interested in learning a little
more about how this guy thinks. The inter-activity is really a
zullztechnology which exemplifies for me the potential of
interactive multimedia. The user is allowed to explore the piece and
the derive their own assumptions of the emotional value of the
succeeding images as they are pulled from his system. Fabian lets
the user control the experience. The images are evocative without
pretension, emotive without sentimentality. The use of color is
local and appropriate. The text elements imbedded in the composition
is used as primarily formal element and yet adds to the overall
effect.
Eduardo Navasse
This piece is pretty strong and
directly affects the emotional state of the viewer. He has succeeded
in expressing the gravity of the situation without artifice or other
extraneous visual elements. This is one of the best projects
presented.
Other criticism of work i cannot include in
my final selection:
Bugs.
Looks like a lot other student
multi-media work that I have seen coming out of my classes taught
both in Texas and New Jersey over the last 8 or so years. Lacks
originality most of all. If this piece is a response to the event of
911 or the artists experience, the connection is so oblique to be
virtually unrecognizable.
Andrey Velikanov
This section
of this piece before the BBS is pretty good. But adding a spot for
every jackass to add his opinion really doesny enhance the
communicative effect in a significant way. Leaving a spot open for
spammers to add links to pornsites and other crap detracts from the
overall success of the piece and makes the project less than worthy
of respect. I would have placed this piece among the top seven had
the artist not added the BBS. One thing that is clear is that when
there are so many voices all speaking at once any clarity of
communication is lost. The sections at the head indicate the artist
has some meaningful things to offer and that are worthy of an
audience. I wish the artist had simply left it at that. And that
would be enough to gain my attention and respect. The images speak
volumes in of themselves.
Reginald Brooks
Too many
images of varying degrees of filter dony add up to a concise and
meaningful statement for me. Looks like photoshop filterism let go
to ad-nauseum.
Marco Costa Brava
Pretentious booshit
unrelated to the event or the experience
Zsigmond Hargitai
Aside from the interesting visual effect of the superimposition
these images have little impact on me at all. Seems as though the
artist is stuck in Neo-Surrealist methodology. They also lack a
connection to the event or the experience of the event.
Antonio Mendosa
The splash screen juxtaposes several
oddly conglomerated but obliquely related images. Then after that we
are barraged with a bad piece of music and a plethora of pop-up
windows that succeed in driving the user away from even being
remotely interested in listening to whatever the zeuckzthe
communication is. This piece does exactly what makes the web a zadz
medium. Filling my screen with a bunch crap does not make me
interested in what is being said. I want to change the channel as
soon as possible. Perhaps some will appreciate the zrreverencezand
zn your face,zzife is shit so you might as well eat itzattitude
displayed but lety hope they are the minority. If anything can be
called art, this piece demonstrates that beauty and in this case
zffective communicationzare truly in the eye of the beholder.
Anna Ursyn
I actually like these paintings a lot. They
have a seriousness and level of competency that really indicates the
artist is working at a mature level. But the relationship to the
event and the experience of the event eludes me.
Babel
Interactive poetry controlled by the unknown users {interesting
idea. But doesny this create exactly what is connoted in the
artists zoniker?zWe have seen that art by committee has been
practiced by the likes of warhol, rusche and others since the early
seventies. What is new? That anybody that wants can add their two
cents?
Ali Mirahbi
Irony in the service of making the
statement that zar is bad.zI clicked one of the ampersands before
the map was drawn and zilled 100 in Tehran.zThis piece actually
might be more successful and make his statement more poignant if the
location you were killing in was left undecided till after you
click. Then you might find that in service of your ideal you
actually killed you own loved ones. To simply use reverse psychology
to make the point that killing others is bad is little simplistic.
War can be good. Of course you have to believe that what you are
doing is right and what your enemy is doing is not. But most of us
will agree that when North Vietnam invaded Cambodia, the evil being
perpetrated by Pol Pot and Kmer Rouge was more evil than the death
and destruction North Vietnam used to stop the madness. If it is not
apparent that killing a whole bunch of Germans and Italians and
Japanese to stop the advance of fascism and nazism, I suggest the
artist go read the Bhagavad-Gita.
Mark Schmitz
Effects
and a clich^p dony add up to a whole lot for me.
Paul
Biedrzycki
This piece just confuses me. The programmer probably
is extremely intelligent. But his piece would require a tremendous
amount of explanation to allow the user to understand what it is he
is attempting to convey. I cannot see what this has to do with the
event or the experience of the event.
Yousef Tabti
What
the hell was that anyhow?
Olga Kisseleva
Page not found
Luigia Cardarelli
Unfortunately the second link in her
javascript was suspended
Kenji Kojima
I wish the
artist had showed what the traffic sign signified rather than the
sign itself. My relatives and friends asked me how the event
impacted me. I had to say that the largest impact aside the
emotional trauma was the traffic jam I sat in for 14 hours trying to
get home that afternoon, evening and night. His sign continually
moves forward which would indicated the viewer was actually able to
go someplace. But the fact is that everyone in the northern new
jersey and in lower NY state sat still in our cars on the freeway
and just got to remember the events we watched from our windows or
on our televisions.
Chriatian Lutz
Who needs flash? The
person who did this piece, that is who! I suggest the artist go back
and read David Siegely zbreating Killer Websites.zThere, Siegel
explains the stay or bale moment, that small amount of time that the
viewer is willing to wait for something meaningful to occur on a
site before they click and go on to the next link. Truthfully, after
clicking through the click again link fifteen times and having it
reload a small change in position and seeing absolutely nothing
meaning being communicated, I have completely lost interest.
Eric Dymond
What the hell was that?
Carlo Zanni
aka Beta
Pretentious booshit. OK! the image of the buildings are
not there either. Why is there a banner on top for some online
casino? What does that do to further the idea? Absolutely nothing.
Well I guess when you have such a thin idea you cannot really do
much to make it even thinner.
Sheila Ernst-Bifano
The
sentiment expressed in this piece really gets at the heart of the
matter, doesny? lots of children came home to empty rooms and
no-one there to meet them. If the children do not make you stop and
think about whether we are making the right decisions I am not sure
what will. The music choice is unfortunate. It over sentimentalizes
the work. The type treatment is weak. I wish the artist had asked a
graphic designer to suggest some type choices that might be a little
more appropriate and enhance the level of communication. I think
this piece would be significantly better if it were silent and let
the image simply speak for themselves. The text might be better if
simply treated as we would if we were doing a traditional book. That
key next to the colon/semi-colon is not an apostrophe, it is a short
hand symbol for the length, foot. This kind of lack of consideration
for the way type itself can communicate indicates a lack of basic
communication design skills.
Trang Chung
This person did
not read the submission to learn what this show was about.
Gregory Chatonsky
The design on this piece is really
pretty good. The type treatment is good and the form analyisi
indicates level of training in design that is quite high. The use of
color in contemporaneous and sophisticated. It really is beautiful.
However it really does not communicate anything except in an oblique
way that is connected to or related to the event. Perhaps the artist
should have defined relat.i.on.ship and connect.i.on. I like this
piece a lot simply for the visual construction and the
inter-activity. But cannot include as it is too obscure as to what
we are supposed to feel or how we are supposed to respond. If we are
not supposed to respond then the piece for this show is just an
intellectual curiosity. I like intellectual games and metaphorically
constructed imagery a lot and believe these can be used to further
the viewery experience both from a theoretically point of view and
from a formal pictorial structural view as well. But the
communication that is afforded must be relevant to the conversation
at hand.
Horit Herman Pelad
While interesting, this
piece is not really related to the events at hand. Yes, the extreme
fundamentalists want to link directly their hatred of the US to the
political and strategic relationship between the US and Israel. And
Israel wants to link directly what happened here to the attacks on
Israeli civilians have suffered for the last fifty years. To me both
a fallacious arguments. And anyone with a heart will recognize the
Palestinians have suffered tremendously from this war that has
dragged on and on and on. If either the Israelis and Palestinians
wanted to live in peace they would just go ahead and do so. While
Ms. Peled goals are laudable, I am not sure this is the right venue.
Plus, I really cannot accept political art, regardless of the
worthiness of the cause, as art at all. It really is just graphic
design, public relations or advertising.
Agricola de Cologne
Three parts? What three parts? Did something go wrong in the
creation of the site? Or do these three uses of the same symbols
constitute three parts. I am confused as to what is I am looking at.
What do the symbols signify? What the is this supposed to cause me
do to do?
Marina Zerbarinni
This piece is really good
except the little block of copy down on the right. The copy is not
necessary. Once again I dislike pop-up windows. I like the visual
construction of this piece a lot. I do think that all of the imagery
could be integrated into one window. What seems to be affecting many
of the artist is that they think that a single window cannot be
partitioned in to separate areas or the these partitioning can occur
over time. Everything does not require a new window and brand new
experience for the viewer. Just because you can do something
technically does not mean that you should. The message or narrative,
linear or non-linear should drive the technology. Technology should
never drive the message, unless the message is the technology
itself. I am certain that the artist in this case is not discussing
the technology, however oblique and fuzzy the message is. Not
withstanding this criticism this is a pretty good piece.
Jurgen Trautwein
This piece is pretty good. We can see a
response from the artist in it. I getting the impression that he did
actually feel something that day and allowed that to come through in
the sketches. I think the sketches on paper by themselves are
probably better than the flash. But he still is able to create an
evocative, expressive piece.
Gustavo Alberto Garcia Vaca
Bad type. That key next to the colon/semicolon is a foot mark
not an apostrophe. These images are knee jerk reactions to a
occurrence that has had a great deal of impact on a lot of people.
The attempt at the use of clich^p copy over these images is almost
insulting in the light of 3000 lost peopley families that will
remember their loss everyday for the rest of their lives. I am not
saying that the artist should not do the work. Everyone is free to
say what ever the hell they wish, in my opinion. Just that he should
recognize that the work he is doing is a superficial pastiche of bad
copy with images that might actually be able to communicate
something on their own. The addition of the copy does not change,
mitigate, alter or otherwise cause these images to communicate
something meaningful. Nor does the use of the images with the copy
make the content of the copy more evocative, communicative or
meaningful. The two are mutually exclusive and cancel one another
out. This leaves the viewer without anything worth paying attention
to.
Kazuyo Okudaira
Yuck! Front page is really ugly.
Mirta Zaliauakas
This person did not read the submission
as to what the show was about.
T. Scarpino
HmmmsM Some
body else had this same idea. But Mr. Scarpino does adds a line of
text to give us at least an inkling of the emotional impact the
occurrence has had on him. But two people not connected coming with
virtually the same idea visually just goes to show that there really
is synchronicity in popular culture.
Monica Moscovich
It
is a nice painting. But, there were a whole bunch of people that ran
into the fray to save others lives. They placed their lives in
danger for the sake of the others.
David Golumbia
Tw447ysbbdhhfhnnS: If the work needs that much explanation
before we look at it something must be missing from the work itself.
Then, inside the work is more incomprehensible theory explained some
more. When the explanation of the work is more important than the
work itself , one might as well just use the explanation and discard
the work altogether. Unless one has the kind of ability as the
writer, Borges, where the description of the larger work is as
evocative as actually writing the actual novel, the viewer is left
with a sense of being cheated out of the experience. I actually like
this piece a lot, but Mr. Golumbia is not working at the level that
I would hope to see from someone of his obvious intelligence and
acumen.
The second piece he presents leaves me asking,
zhese are a lot of pretty photos but, so what?z
Phillip
Wood.
Man, I cannot stand that piece of music. The text
streaming across the screen is irrelevant to the words being
written. How does moving a piece of text increase the meaning that
the words convey? In this case it does nothing to increase the level
of communication. Just because one can move something, it does not
necessarily follow that one should move it.
Antoine Schmidt
Contrary to his description, the piece is neither instantaneous
nor autonomous. This piece might work as a projection piece but
would be better if it was left to the viewer to puzzle out what ever
meaning can be derived, if any.
Wernfried Lackner
The
images, I guess, are those that are collect from who chooses to
upload to his site. Is the audio collected in the same way. To me
this seems like the artist has relinquished control of his voice and
given it over to group consciousness. The images together are pretty
expressive and are in a tone that lend them selves to an
interpretation that leads the viewer to the understand of how
gruesome the event was.
Reynald Drouhin
This first
section of this piece is really beautiful. I think I get the point
of the webcams and that we just carry on without thinking and then
something happens. But what happens in this case is the momentous
and memorable. I think Mr. Drouhin is just too damn smart and
consequently the work is a little too arcane to communicate to a
broad audience. Frankly, I dony have the patience necessary to wade
through the entire piece.
Michiel Knaven
This person did
not read what the show was about.
Judith Villamayor
Oh
shit! I opened this darn thing again. I guess she has captured the
terror of the event but do I really want to experience it again in
that fashion? O.K. she succeeded in her goal, to cause me to have an
emotional reaction to the work. I have an emotional reaction when I
step in a pile of dog shit as well. But I really would prefer not
stepping in it.
Aniko Gulyaz
The photoshop filter in the
images is really unnecessary. The image of the skyline by itself is
all that needs to be there. When the artist/designer begins to think
that communication can be enhanced by adding some cheap trick I
begin to suspect the work as a whole and whether the artist/designer
has thought through what they are trying to say and who they are
talking to. In this case it indicates to me that the images were
without any attributes that allowed the emotional communication that
the artist/designer is after. The filter does not add any additional
attributes in any way that increases the evocative or emotional
qualities that we are supposed to take away from the piece.
Domingo Hernandez
War is hell isny it? Unfortunately
the artisty way of providing this information does not even have
the depth of a badly produced Hallmark card. Perhaps the artist
should go a take a good look at what Hallmark does. The artists and
designers at Hallmark are some of the most intelligent and
sophisticated designers in the world. They can take the most
simplistic and clich^p crap and really turn it into something that
can be extremely evocative and communicative, and the stuff they do
resonates with such a huge segment of the population on a personal
and almost instinctive manner. This arist's piece does not, in my
opinion.
Megan Jacobs
I like this piece a lot. But the
relationship to the event and the experience of the event is very
oblique. I think this artist should pursue the field of artisty
books. The use of image and text has an intimate immediacy and a
personally connectedness that poetry affords as a medium. But this
piece is not really related to what the show is about.
Gabriel Otero
The choice of the audio tracks is
unfortunate. One wonders whether Mr. Otero is taking the work
seriously. Although he able to effectively communicate his
intentions those intentions are somewhat shallow.
Mark
Daggett
This person did not read the submission guidelines at
all.
Sakana Sana
Technical proficiency is extremely high
but what is really being communicated? Is it just that we can click
on some stuff and other stuff happens? I am finding little that
actually resonates with an emotional experience that might have been
affected by the event or the experience of the event. The piece
demonstrates really good flash geek shit but this is what happens
when you have someone who is too damn intelligent for the rest us.
What is said is so arcane that is has little impact because the
dumbasses like myself just cany seem to make a connection.
Maya Kolagero
More pop up crap taking control of my
machine. The exact kind of thing that I think is wrong with Internet
technology. I had the shut damn computer down to get control of my
system again. Isny this kind of thing what the Taliban were
attempting to do in Afghanistan? Taking complete control. Perhaps
the artist is attempting to make a statement that taking control of
everything is not a good thing. Thanks a lot, Maya!
Blazenko
Karezin
Empty screen.
Michael Mastrototara
I think
that the influence of advertising on art has not been a very
beneficial effect to the quality of the work as a whole or to the
communication being afforded. In this case the artist/designer
appears to have surrendered to a small irony in the copy. But for me
the depth of this communication is rather shallow.
Maurice
Benayoun
Page not found
Max Herman
Page not found
Laurie Halsey Brown
O.K. art has no meaning. I am not
sure this piece develops ity own meaning either.
Igor
Ulanovksy
Cannot support this.
Jody Zellen
I like
the collage of photo imagery in this lot in the splash screen. The
color sense is pretty good. The relationship of the imagery and
style in the second flash (animation?) is not firmly developed.
There is too much of a shift in style and what is being communicated
to think of the two as one piece. Frankly I cannot grasp what those
figures moving horizontally signify. The type usage is competent.
Franck Ancel
I would include this in a show titled,
z`mbiguous Obsurities.zI like the piece, but, the message is
extremely arcane if there is a message at all.
Clement
Thomas
An unfortunate choice in audio track. Well, we have
really proved that anything can be called art. And we should take
that art at face value. Now the question we must ask is, zvhat value
does the work have?zFor me there is little value here at all.
Warren Richard Furman
Too arty!
Colleen Corradi
I like the illustration a lot. I can see this being used in
conjunction with a article or other text based piece on terrorism.
Brooke Knight
I really dislike pop-up windows. And since
I have a pop-up filter on my browser I was just getting a lot of
alarm noises till I turned the filter off. In terms of content, Mr.
Knight has done the most unique piece in the show.
David
Crawford
I refuse to review this piece as it is obvious that it
is a large group effort.
Ansgard Thomas
I like the
painting a lot.
Doron Golan
What the hell was that?
Maria Tjader-Knight
I find this piece very beautiful but
am having a hard time making the connection to the show's theme.
Bulent Bas
Everything is purged from my consideration of
this.
Andreas Troeger
I need more than pop music.
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| Sunday, October 20th,
2002 at 11:36 |
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) by russel pensyl, i have another suggestion by ansgard
thomson..no, thanks ansgard, what i'm doing is not about children's
education either.. i have nothing against it but that's not what i'm
doing right now..