What I like about this work is the questions it asks about the duality of individual broadcast, be it purposeful or not. One can easily draw a connection between the face tracking software being used in what seems like a naive manner and face tracking software used by advanced surveillance systems found throughout our city streets, airports, and train stations.

xXdan462Xx really questions the differences between such acts as being videotaped “unknowingly” walking through a subway station and “knowingly” recording and posting your likeness on the Internet. More is known about who will view such security camera footage than can possibly be known about an audience on the Internet, raising import issues about our perceptions of their purpose.

It is almost like xXdan462Xx is trying to make us feel like he wasn’t attempting to create a work of art at all, questioning even the purposefulness of his own act of creation. It’s a skill very few people have.

Interestingly, one of the things I was going to bring up in the post that got lost for whatever reason, was that the piece reminded me of how in the late 90’s and early 2000 people would go see DJ’s spin, and various musicians working with electronics perform, and complain that it was totally dull watching people turn a few nobs for hours on end. Like any good net artist, Cortright knows that about a minute and a half of nob turning is fascinating - do much more than that and you’ve lost your audience. It makes me feel like the piece builds something positive into a tradition of performance that often suffered from some significant problems just a short time ago.

The early, classic Sherman work was DIY and done on the cheap. It’s not her fault she got canonized so early and was forced ever thereafter to work with big budgets.

My point in bringing her up (I think) was how web cammers kind of do what she did early on instinctively. It’s personal or self-centric photography, but still a series of media tropes (the “working girl,” the “ingenue,” “Marilyn” etc) Whereas Cortright isn’t going there–she’s a nerd pushing buttons to summon kitties and pizza slices and you just happen to be watching her.

I’m not sure I’m understanding your comment on Cindy Sherman correctly. Are you saying that work like Cortright’s is more punk than Sherman’s because there’s a greater DIY element to it? If so, I suppose there’s some element of truth to that, but I suspect Sherman was just as broke when she was in her twenties and making that work, and probably didn’t have too much help past the necessities. Does the DIY aspect of it really add that much to this particular piece?