A heads up was given to me by Tom Moody about Michael Bell-Smith's inclusion of his Digital Pog page during his presentation at the Montage: Unmonumental Online talk which took place early this year. Coincidentally, only a couple days ago, Rhizome put up the entire panel discussion on Vimeo - I'm reposting Michael's talk here.
It was nice to see him get a little more into his rationale behind this project, as there isn't that much on his pog page (it doesn't really have to be, but it's interesting): the parts about the pogs being not really for game play, but as collectible aesthetic "objects;" their "web-ring"-like function that brings various people interested in web art together, introducing them to other artists and individuals that are making interesting things and that they may never have seen otherwise.
I don't know much about the psychology of collection, but there is always something attractive about the collectible and pleasurable about the display of collections - huge pieces of furniture have been designed for ages simply for the display of collectibles, and I'm sure many people remember how Web 1.0 homepages were often littered with sprites depicting various things, characters, etc. (which also, incidentally, served as a link advertising your own homepage).
I think the interesting thing, though, is how it brings this practice to the "art" level or to "art" status. So amongst all the image bookmarking sites (which in effect are art collections), one can still have small images that can easily - and intentionally - be collected and displayed online; one could go along collecting tens of Naruto avatars, or collect works of art by actual artists (though the feat of the former will never go unappreciated). But it's not even as serious as that - they're fun, creative, original, clever ...
Hmmm ... to be continued, I think.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment