Best of the Web, 2008, Contributor’s Choice Part Two of Six

Justin Kemp, Pseudoevent, 2008, Screengrab AFC

The Best of the Web 2008 Contributor’s Choice continues today.  The series features the year’s best links as defined by contributors, Part One posted yesterday.  Two invitees are included in each post (unless listed otherwise), and the feature includes the following people:

Liam McEneaney – comedian, citizen

Camille Paloque-Bergès, PHD candidate and Teaching Assistant in Information Science and Communication at the Laboratoire Paragraphe

Kevin Bewersdorf, artist

John Michael Boling, internet user / artist / jmb

Magda Sawon, Owner of Postmasters Gallery New York

Kari Altmann, artist

Ceci Moss, Rhizome Senior Editor and Blogger

Tom Moody, artist

Javier Morales, artist

Marcin Ramocki, Artist/filmmaker

Jon Williams, Free software developer

Barbara London, Associate Curator, Department of Film and Video, MoMA
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
=================================================

Meet Kevin Bewersdorf and John Michael Boling!

Kevin Bewersdorf, artist

• http://www.manbabies.com
  It is remarkable how one simple concept can be extended into a gushing supply of content.

• http://pilgrimsprogrock.tumblr.com
  I particularly enjoy Joel Holmberg’s work with answers.com. Making a kind of open forum poetry, Joel poses rhetorical questions to a site where everyone has an opinion but nobody has any answers. The wound of the question is opened without any possibility of its healing, and must therefore be accepted as unanswered as we helplessly watch the question bleed into the web.

• http://www.mikes-world.org
  Michael Smith has never had a website before this year, but with the touring of his first museum retrospective there is finally this online catalog of his video, performance, and installation work of the past 30 years.

• http://www.askgodanything.org
  Who made this site? Is there an author or is the error the author? Is there something there or nothing there? That’s why I like it.

• http://www.clubinternet.org/archive/tag_team
  Club Internet revolutionized the way I saw surf clubs this year, and this edition organized by Guthrie Lonergan caught my eye as a “special teams” operation. Even the clubs have no borders — previously known increments can be grabbed from other clubs and sites, and framed as a new cohesive statement, a non-verbal web essay.

• http://www.guthrielonergan.com
  A great piece. Not to be a Guthrie hog, but nobody else can touch this guy in 08.

• http://www.spiritsurfers.net/monastery/?p=591#comments
  I hope it is seen as honest and not vain for me to mention a surf club that I am a member of, but I just can’t leave it out from this list — I had so many great exchanges this year with my fellow INFOmonks. This post by Deeper had me excited for a couple days.

• http://www.tvchannel.tv/dullaartresponses.html
  Ben Coonley’s responses to Constant Dullaart’s “youtube as subject” herald an new era of default minimalism: http://www.constantdullaart.com/site/html/new/youtubeasasubject.html

• GOOD NEWS FOLKS pdf newsletter
  http://ethanhc.com/newsletter/GOOD-NEWS-FOLKS_sampler.pdf
  This weekly email newsletter made my day every Thursday of 2008 — I was often found rolling on the floor with laughter at Ethan Hayes-Chute’s personal to-do lists, rustic bitmaps, recipes, phony advice columns, and three sentence short stories. All 52 issues are set to come out as a printed book from One Star Press this spring.

• VVORK Twitter
  http://theageofmammals.com/2008/vvorktwitter.html
  I was never a close follower of vvork.com [editors note: vvork is a website that posts artwork, usually without any explanatory text] but ever since vvork twitter began I was hooked and have not even once returned to the regular vvork. One step higher than vvork’s incomplete summaries is this complete summary. After vvork twitter, why would we need vvork? I have thought about this work extensively, both at and away from my computer, and found its existence to starkly shed light upon the frailties and misdirections of this limited marketplace we live in. I thank Tom Moody for continuing Guthrie Lonergan’s simple and poignant work.

John Michael Boling, internet user / artist / jmb

• Clubinternet.org – This was fun and exciting to watch all year.

• Rhizome.org Interview with Kevin Bewersdorf – If I taught a net art class this would be required reading.

• google street view van – Joe McKay This Google “steet view” van image is created entirely from reflections of the van in store windows in San Francisco. Utterly sublime.

• Touch My Body (Green Screen Version) – Oliver Laric – Doin’ it and doin’ it and doin’ it well.

• http://thedisagreeinginternet.com/ – Constant Dullaart – Yes.

• Untitled (Mona Lisa) – Charles Broskoski .JPG documentation of sculpture is the new sculpture.

• YouTube user crystalsculpture, crystalsculpture2, crystalsculpture3, crystalsculpture4 , A.K.A. Javier Morales – If you watched every single one of Javier Morales’s videos and favorites on youtube 10 times, you would be 10 times cooler than you currently are.

• Harm Van Den Dorpels introductory post on spiritsurfers.net. For the canon.

• Hottest to Coldest – Aleksandra Domanovic – If you are a collector, Aleksandra Domanovic is a sure bet. Her work is wonderful. Read more about Hottest to Coldest here.
• http://fuckyousidewaysyoufuckyouduckcrazyshitmanyeah.com/ – Nikola Tosic – Psychiatry.

• Eye White – James Whipple – This made me realize that even though humanity’s future will likely be bleak, it might simultaneously be beautiful.

• Secondary Market – Hanne Mugaas, – Gaussian blurring boundaries.

• The Age of Mammals – Guthrie Lonergan – The collective 2008 creative output of Guthrie Lonergan is nothing short of inspirational.