Screengrab AFC 

Bloggy types will have already read about Google’s new artist themes, a nifty background image that renders links and virtually any other type in the igoogle masthead unreadable. Also, thank God there’s a Jeff Koons theme, because he’s really been low on publicity lately. To be honest, if I used igoogle, I would have liked the Vacuum Cleaner image they proposed as his thumbnail, but that’s not what you get. Click on this link and three different Koons themes are shown, one of which is automatically assigned to your masthead.  Given that refreshing doesn’t seem to rotate the Koons’ images, I’m not sure why we’re presented with a choice.  The functionality is so poor, I’m also generally unclear about why anyone would use this.

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boing boing
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It’s website review day here at Art Fag City! Today we discuss two sites only, Frieze, whose new site makes me very happy, and the Eyebeam reblog, a new media website, now trailing behind traditional art publications in what some might argue is their own medium of expertise. Let the reviews begin!

Frieze Magazine

Until recently, I’d been very frustrated by the Frieze Magazine website. Their publication is amongst my favorites, but it’s expensive as hell in the States, and their site barely had any content, there were next to no images, and it was difficult to navigate (the Way Back Machine only provides broken documentation of the website, so those who have never been will just have to take my word for it). Hello overhaul! RSS feeds. Check. Large images. Check. Reviews, news and color coded search functions. Check! Predictably, the content on the site is great, (as far as I can tell, it’s no different than what’s in the magazine). I like that they publish articles tangentially related to art, such as Different Thinking, an interview with Rob Janoff, the designer of Apple’s logo, along side art reviews such as Steven Stern’s excellent Whitney Biennial write-up. My one wish however, is that the site had a blog that updated at least twice a day and open comments, (UPDATE: you can comment in the reviews and comment sections which are web only). Site and magazine specific content gives readers a reason to use both publications differently, and while I’m clearly biased, I really believe blogs add life to otherwise largely static sites.

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Eyebeam’s Reblog

Only two months ago I observed that I’d stopped reading Eyebeam’s reblog, though I wasn’t overly specific about the problems past the site needing a redesign. Certainly, that’s still the case, though to be clear, this would involve rethinking the blog as a whole, since on a very basic level the technology no longer meets the needs of Internet surfers. As websites such as Buzzfeed, Rhizome and even smaller operations like c-monster have shown, web curating on its own (ie simply reposting material) generally isn’t enough; editorial comment is essential. Eyebeam’s software allows rebloggers to do this, but people rarely do because it’s a lot more work and the position is unpaid.

The publishing platform itself can be described as a customized rss feed reader that allows bloggers to republish posts at the touch of a button. Knowing that a variety of source material is essential to any good reblog, optimizing the functionality of the software they’re currently working with involves some rethinking of the recent feed pruning. There simply aren’t enough art website feeds on their list to create a of successful mix of art and technology. Frieze Magazine, Modern Art Notes, Edward Winkleman, RHIZOME, Tom Moody, Art Review.com, c-monster, MTAA-RR, James Wagner, and even myself aren’t in their feeds, and there’s no good reason for this. It’s not like these sites aren’t relevant to new media artists, and a reblogger can certainly manage searching through a few more articles. In addition to this, the only social bookmarking (del.icio.us) feed remaining is the eyebeam-reblog tag, which ensures that only active eyebeam readers have any say in the content. Surely heavy del.icio.us users such as wizardishungry, 53os, eddietainment, and cory_arcangel would add something very significant to the reblog.

In the event anyone is wondering how much progress the Eyebeam reblog has made over the last two years, I’d like to point to their bloglines subscriber numbers, which have actually decreased slightly from 104 readers to 102 during this time. Granted this isn’t empirical evidence the blog isn’t as well read as it used to be — there’s more than one feed reader out there and to be honest I’m sure their traffic has grown — but there’s also a lot more people on the web. If Eyebeam wants their reblog to remain relevant, some effort to address these issues is clearly needed.

Admittedly this has little to do with art, but who could resist republishing that headline?  The Toronto Star reports a Canadian study commissioned by the conservative party finds widespread support for Ottawa using  Web 2.0 programs and strategies to more effectively reach the population.

“Adoption of Web 2.0 applications represents an opportunity to transform the `face’ of the government of Canada, to make it appear more approachable and more responsive to Canadians,” says the report’s summary.”

Speaking to popular applications explored for use,

“The survey warns that Facebook and YouTube users log on primarily for entertainment and recreation purposes and would not expect, or necessarily want, to meet official government missives in this “private” space.”

I guess there’s some resistance on the part of Canadians in investing tax payer dollars to create a Canadian Public Service Agency fan page, or a policy status widget.

Bennett Williamson of the Double Happiness surf blog wrote the following to me last night an email exchange about April 18th’s summation of the Futures of the Internet panel.

I am interested in the question of the internet leveling things vs. the internet having hierarchy, but less politically and more (in a slightly Convergence Culture way) technically. Less interested in the search engines organizing what is supposed to be an “open playing field” and more interested in how our actions/expectations change as ease of information and exposure to a variety of mediums all gets presented through the same browser screen.

Cultural convergences as I understand it typically discusses the intersection between the commercial and amateurism, a popular point of interest for many surf bloggers. I pull it from the quote above if for no other reason than it’s useful to name. Of course, for me, what an artist does with that material in the process of finding it or after seems to be the point at which art happens, an aspect I think many people find confusing simply because there isn’t enough history and discussion about the practice for many viewers to feel comfortable labeling what works for them and what doesn’t.

Adding to Williamson’s comments about the browser, I’d like to begin by noting that medium specificity has always created unique viewer relationships. People experience sculpture differently than painting for example, because there is a different physical and spatial relationship to the object. In many ways these concepts remain the same when viewing art on a computer even if the variables change. So for example, unlike a photograph or a sculpture, a net artist has less control over a viewers interaction with its framing mechanisms. The size of screen or the color of the browser a user choses to view their work in, vary from household to household, and there’s very little an artist can do to customize that experience. Other aspects remain constant — viewers will experience work on a flat screen, images will be always seen at 72 dpi, they will always be framed by a browser, in all likelihood the smallest screen size will be 800 pixels which informs how an artist works.

All of this of course is old hat to designers and net artists, who have been working with this set of problems for a while. However, for those who don’t think about these concerns all that often, it’s worth remarking that a large part of an artist’s web practice — whether they think too much about it or not — is implicitly concerned with image file management and display. In other words, decisions about the size and placement of a jpg or video file are always being made. In this way, I see a lot of aesthetic similarities between net art to collage and photography, because frame, composition, and layering, are always a concern. This of course, doesn’t speak to the element of interactivity or the conceptual concerns of the artist, but since we’re just talking aesthetics here, those topics are beyond the scope of this post.

A series of posts I really enjoy from Loshadka. Check the blog out regularly - there’s usually something good up.

I like that this jpeg is damaged. Image link.

Image link

museumofthevoidafteracidaftersmithsonafterafterrainbowroad.jpg

By the end of this week Art Fag City’s Comic Con Versus The Art Fairs quiz will have either stolen or enriched roughly 40 seconds of over 12,000 people’s lives. Either way, we’re pleased! The test asks readers to identify Comic Con and Art Fair attendees; some of whom we felt looked like they could be either, others who were unmistakably from a particular demographic, and a remaining few weird art celebrity picks with some cross over potential. Probably the most amusing result from this quiz thus far comes in the number of readers who identify Eva and Adele and Jocelyn Wildenstein as video game costume freaks (roughly 45%), and amongst the more surprising, was the 89% reader success rate in identifying the over weight man in front of a bunch of crates as a comic book guy. I would have thought that number would be a lot higher!

A special thanks to Art Fag City, Vulture, GalleyCat, Drawn and Quarterly, Boing Boing, readers for participating in the test.

Cash Brown, George, 2008, oil on canvas, 20 x 24 inches. Originally via: Daily Serving. Link tip: S. Chernick

Gustave Courbet’s The Origin of the World has inspired a great number of paintings since its execution in 1866, Australian artist Cash Brown amongst the most recent. “I have been thinking a lot about the concept of originality and the derivative nature of so much contemporary artwork”, says Brown, going on to explain, “This led me to think of the beginning of Modernism. Origin, original, beginning, it all seemed a bit obvious…but I liked that about it.” In other words, the root concept lies in the connection between the meaning of the word origin, Courbet’s titling, and contemporary interest in appropriation. I’ll let you draw your own conclusions about this project’s depth, and point to a few other variations by the artist here.

On that same note, a google search on the subject provides additional fodder below.

An animation of photo graphics and chanting monks inspired by Courbet’s Origin of the World. This may not even be bad in an interesting way.

Tanja Ostojic, Untitled, 2004

It’s probably unfair to contextualize a mature work commenting on the EU’s politics of non-integration with the rest of these paintings, but I can’t help but find this brand of underwear amusing. Thus, the picture stays.

UPDATE:

Filip Noterdaeme, The Birth of a New Museum, 1991

Filip Noterdaeme of HOMU sends us a painting [above] executed during his final MFA year at Hunter College. The work marries Courbet’s, L’origine du Monde , with Rene Magritte’s generative 1929 painting, La Trahison des Images . This particular piece has quite a bit of history behind it, so I’ve posted the write up from the artist’s website below.

Birth of a New Museum has an interesting history. In the early Nineties, when he was an art student at Hunter College, Noterdaeme invented an eccentric alter ego for himself, a certain Marcellus Wasbending-Ttum, a painter and self-proclaimed “Homoplagiarist.” Under this alias, Noterdaeme created multiple works, some of which he painted himself, some of which, like Birth (originally titled Self-Portrait), were executed to his specifications by a hired professional. When Noterdaeme, acting as Marcellus Wasbending-Ttum, presented the Hunter faculty with this “Self-Portrait,” he found himself accused of plagiarism and was prematurely expelled from the MFA program. Embittered, Noterdaeme destroyed all his artworks - with the notable exception of Self-Portrait - and, for the next ten years, abstained from making art, working as a museum educator for the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Guggenheim Museum. In 2002, Noterdaeme created his own museum, the Homeless Museum of Art (HoMu). When he eventually turned his rental apartment in Brooklyn into a showcase for HoMu, he gave the painting a place of honor in the apartment’s High Gallery and renamed it Birth of a New Museum.

I find the google sky design a little ugly, but maybe they will fix this in time. 

Eyebeam resident artist and photocopy astrologist Joe Winter will undoubtedly enjoy the newly released Google Sky, as will any one who has found themselves constallationally challenged.  Type in the words “Little Dipper” or “Pluto” or any other outer space item and this new service will find it for on their map of stars.  I’m not sure what practical application Google Sky has, other than making an astronomy class easier, but as an inevitable time suck, I fully support it.

One further note on Joe Winter:  When the artist presented his work last November at Eyebeam, as part of their granting process I wasn’t sure what to think of his work, but two points were made that I liked quite a bit.  One, executive director Amanda McDonald Crowley, observed that the project would keep the artist in their administrative offices a little more which she liked.  While the potential for photocopy machine wars still seems great to me, I of course responded to the idea of administrators and artists getting to know each other a little better.  Second, when asked how long the artist could sustain his interest in a project with a very simply process, he replied something to the effect of, “well, the residency is 6 months, so about that amount of time.”

Bjorn Magnhildoen, NorwayWeb

Yesterday I discussed Virtual Jihadi, a repurposed video game by Wafaa Bilal intended to promote discussion by enacting a morally questionable act. At this point, I’m sure we can all agree that the game has achieved this end (see endless coverage), and though its opponents will tell you it crosses a moral line, Virtual Jihadi only proposes a humanized depraved act. By contrast, NorwayWeb by Bjorn Magnhildoen actually commits a crime and asks us to contemplate its morality. Scraping the web for public information, NorwayWeb somehow finds the tax information of each of its country’s citizens (roughly 4 million) and compiles it as a number carpet (see picture above). Hovering over a number in the carpet, will produce the tax payer information in an adjacent window, though the results are essentially meaningless since there’s no way to search for any one name. Also, since the program takes about 555 hours to complete, and the results are lost to the viewer once the page is closed, there’s not much most people could do with this data. And yet, it forces a conversation I feel guilty for even engaging. Just because the information is needlessly out there to be harvested, doesn’t necessarily mean that it should be done, even if the end goal is to make us more aware of the ways in which our privacy is being compromised. Is there no better way to make this point than by creating a poorly functioning tool that suggests the possibility of more sinister crimes?

Originally via: furtherfield

A while ago ArtCal sent out a survey to its readers, and today, I wrote a piece detailing a few of the results. If you’re an internet art nerd like me, you’ll probably find at least a few of them interesting.

We seek out under recognized and undiscovered galleries at ArtCal specifically promoting the best emerging talent from those fields. Launched November 18th, 2004, what began as a listing service has seen significant growth over the last three and a half years. In 2005 we added images to the site’s features, as well as RSS and iCal feeds. At the time, no other art listing website offered such tools, so I imagine the technology made heavy Internet users extraordinarily happy; as an active blogger it certainly made my life a lot easier. ArtCal continued in its Internet pioneering only a few months later hiring me as their listings editor - clearly a high point in their services! Since that time, we launched our newsletter on March 30th, 2006, our beautiful redesign on August 28th 2007, and most recently, ArtCal Zine, the flagship event and reviews publication which debuted on October 4th, 2007.

As ArtCal embarked on 2008 we asked our readers to tell us a little bit more about themselves, and are now ready announce our findings. Through the course of this survey we learned a number of interesting facts, not the least of which is that you all go to a lot of openings! Of those polled, only 5.2% said they didn’t go to any receptions at all, where as 50% said they attended at least 1-3 each month, and 31% attend 5-10. 13.3% of you seem to have lives solely centering around openings and arrive at more than 10 throughout the course of 30 days.

To read the full piece click here.

Artnet, your source for softcore porn and avant garde fashion! Congratulations are clearly in order to the magazine for finally showcasing both tits AND ass on the front page of their esteemed website. So long as we’re reporting on boobs and gossip, Lisa Boyle’s 2007 photograph of Dave Navarro makes us wonder who’s legs he’s putting his head in between. Is this his now ex wife Carmen Electra, a new lover, or a model hired specifically for the pose? Boyle’s gallerist, Guy Hepner LA is also in the dark about this.

Four screengrabs AFC 

“So I can go to the website and watch this, if I knew how?” the gray haired society woman asked her guide.  She was speaking of Oliver Laric’s video 50 50, at the New Museum, a work she may not have connected with for a number of reasons, not the least of which being I was hogging the headphones.

I mention her words because they represent either the reason net art will never find an easy home in  museums, or why it needs to be there.  For many, the best and only way to display net art properly is virtually, and therefore its space in the museum  doesn’t make much sense.  Old lady society simply reaffirms this while kicking the artist for creating something in a medium she distrusts and will never adapt to.  For others, her words reveal the necessity of giving net art a physical location because they underscore the responsibility of the museum to find and introduce the public to new art.   Certainly this woman would never find 50 50 on her own, nor would she think about its value.  While she may not contemplate it further, the museum gives an important seal of approval to art that at least increases the chances of that happening.  I like to think Unmonumental Online’s presence in the gallery represents the end to the thought that the mere existence of Google should mean that people will naturally find all the art they never knew existed.

Allow me to take a minute to complain about the idiocy gmail has suddenly taken to assuming of its users. Positive changes to programs do not include adding a feature that allows you to “go to this link” after you’ve attached it to a word in your email. I put it there myself so someone else could look at it, so why would I a) not know how to follow my own link, b) need it again? Also, previously the picture icon of a broken link in the tool bar menu told me with complete clarity how to remove a link I decided I didn’t want. Now, the “remove this link” message serves only to obscure the text I’m writing.

The most annoying added idiot feature however has little to this. Undoubtedly designed by money makers wanting you to stay around longer and click on their ads, a pop up now appears when you click to sign out of your account reading, “Are you sure you want to navigate away from this page?” Thanks for your concern gmail, but it’s not like you don’t save my drafts every two seconds (except of course, when I’m writing something long and important and you decide not to work.) I know what I’m doing.

Speaking to the larger philosophies behind Google, the initial success behind the search engine, to my mind, lay in their decision not to try and anticipate what a user might want, but rather assuming we knew best (ie no categories, and filters based the number of links to a particular website.) These new changes seem antithetical to the reasons Google became popular in the first place.

Additional note: I love that gmail is free, but it also means it offers no services when you actually need it. Given my reliance on the service, this does make me a little uncomfortable.

Screengrab from Fia Backtröm’s, Productive Failure in No Copy No Paste

As a word of warning, I’ll issue the disclaimer that I normally don’t recommend interviews comprised of all the things I hate. Fia Backström’s September conversation with Nick Stillman on NYFA Current, is hard to read, nothing can be copied or pasted, the media works have no easy to grab unique urls, some of the videos don’t play properly, and it makes use of the horrid pop-up window, a popular browser feature in 2001. However, everything about this work looks and feels like net art, so naturally I’m interested — even if it does happen to fall into a category of art with which I have a love hate relationship — institutional critique.

Screengrab from Fia Backtrom’s, No Copy No Paste

In as much as many of us, including myself, tire of such topics, the interview and work appeals to me nonetheless because it succeeds where so much art today fails; it is well put together, packs a few surprises, and most importantly, doesn’t pretend to be anything more than what it is. As such, despite non-traditional formating [captured above], a standard interview structure remains basically in tact. Nick Stillman more or less begins by asking Backström how she defines her practice, she responds, and they proceed to discuss her work. The interview itself, of course, is also an artwork, an observation that can be made on aesthetics alone, or by virtue of the fact that she describes her practice as at least in part about locking down and stabilizing parameters, and proceeds to illustrate this point throughout the text. Backström also identifies an interest in investigating economic and social dimensions within images or events both of which are discussed in the interview.

Screengrab from Fia Backtröm’s, Tablecloths For Commercial Galleries in No Copy No Paste

Such was the case in regards to her tablecloths and fliers featuring graphically appealing arranged gallery names [see above]. On the surface, it’s hard to know why there should be too much distinction between the investigations of gallery marketing by Dan Levenson, and those of Fia Backström, apart from the fact that the former creates branding for a fictional gallery inspired by the real world, while Backström makes products for pre-existing businesses. Both seem interested in the idea of creating image branding on unlikely materials, neither claiming any more or less substance than what you see. “Their content is their circulation.” dictates a male voice reading Backström’s essay on table clothes thereby separating the work. Perfectly defining the perimeters of her project, she similarly claims nothing critical in her rearrangement of art forum ads purely on formal considerations. The viewer is left to decide upon the significance of distribution and Backström’s self described “love for images” as subject material. Backed by Madonna’s Vogue, the fact that the interest is so well expressed, leads me to believe that if nothing else, such concise articulation of those concerns holds importance.

Screengrab from Fia Backtröm’s, Productive Failure in No Copy No Paste

Backström goes on to speak about the inherent problem in finding ways to make failure productive, since action typically requires the awareness of potential deficiency. Subscribing to the belief that no refusal should be made without proposing solutions, the artist flashes an image of a happy business man, presumably representing a problem efficiently solved. Conversely he may simply represent structural insanity, as do the children in Swedish artist Peter Theilgaard’s painting titled either “Are You Productive Little Friend?” or “Are You Profitable Little Friend?”

“Anyhow, I’d rather have structural insanity looking like unproductive refusals.” Backström explains obliquely after offering up the loose title translation above. Assuming this means she’d prefer a negative reaction to unhealthy economic models than whatever that placid smile above actually means I can’t say I blame her. That said, the statement intentionally opaque, leaves room for the message to fail completely in delivering any meaning. This too is acceptable within the set perimeters of the essay — “let’s play failure” — she tells us, admitting that she’s not sure how positive results might be achieved. I’m fairly certain there won’t be any if that’s the game, but you have to hand it to Backström for not being afraid to try.

Art To Go, Screengrab AFC

Will somebody stop Regina Hackett before she does some serious damage? The editor of Art to Go, has a problem with art bloggers who don’t get to the point; a fair enough criticism, but why pick on J.T. Kirkland, an artist who is reflecting on his own show? Artists need be held to the same writing standards as everyone else, but a personal blog isn’t the place to apply them. Kirkland maintains for site for his own artistic growth and his site adds a life and vitality to the fine art community on the web.  He should not be shat upon for donating his time and experiences.

Hackett also nails Edward Winkleman for Wednesday’s meandering post titled Revealing too Much, whereby he discusses the recently revealed identity of the Mona Lisa. She’s right, it takes him a bit of time to get to the meat of it, but so what? He’s a self published gallerist who maintains a blog for gallery promotion and out of personal interest. There’s nothing gained in condemning one post for structure when the bulk of his work contributes something very positive to the community.

Paul Slocum, You’re Not My Father, Screengrabs AFC

Paul Slocum informs Networked Music Review blogger Helen Thorington that Full House re-enactors can’t be bought for 80 bucks, but tend to bite when offered $150.00. Launched this Friday, Slocum’s video, You’re Not My Father, remakes a scene from Full House featuring Candice Cameron and Dave Coulier with the paid help of actors and fans. The new vignettes take place in a photocopy depot, an actors studio, and array of suburban homes, none matching the exact rhythm of the original dialog delivery.

By layering the original and re enacted pieces, Slocum’s video may reveal a collective sympathy towards an essentially empty scene, but its real virtuosity lays in the musical composition. Carefully building a nuanced soundtrack whereby even the collective voice of its re-enactors never drowns out the source material, what might be an otherwise banal video collage eloquently shows our personal response to nostalgic ephemera to be a whisper relative to the flat and highly constructed voice of pop culture.

10. Damsels in Success

Finally, a professional networking site designed to give women a leg up by eliminating 60% of the work force. That’s right, no dudes allowed here. Claiming to provide an alternative to the traditional content provided to women, the biggest problem this site needs to address is the fact that the sentiment suggests that job opportunities and self help advice were never available in the first place. Damsels in Success founder Harleen Kahlon might also rethink her choice of corny girl power name — it may very well be the worst I’ve seen to date.

From left to right: Lis Martin, Dr. T.F Chen, Mikael Vojinovic

9. Gawker Art Banners

Publishing mogul Nick Denton contributes to fine art by putting together an ad program that slots art work in empty ad spaces, and then squandering the idea with a roster of artists so embarrassingly bad any artist with a wit of sense would refuse their chance at “exposure”. Gawker curator Liz Dimmitt of Gumshoe LLC attempted to address the issue of quality earlier this year in a mass art blogger solicitation for advice, though we can’t imagine she received too much response. She clearly hadn’t bothered to look at anyone’s archives, an easy first step before asking someone for charity professional advice. We haven’t noticed much improvement in Gawker’s featured artists since then.

8. DesignSponge and Apartment “Art”

As a whole, DesignSponge and Apartment Therapy aren’t bad sites, but the willy nilly labeling of illustration, craft an anything else you might mount on a wall in your home as art could stand rethinking. Vintage bathing suits in a frame enjoy the elevated to the status of art at DesignSponge, as do illustrations of men raking leaves at Apartment Therapy. People who consider old clothing in a frame aren’t doing any one any harm of course, but with all the bad work the sites feature, readers with any kind of art background end up wishing for either a little more curation or a little less art.

7. ArtWorld Salon

Truth be told every so often these guys break a story or produce a strong comment thread so we debated a little before granting these guys a slot in our Worst in the Web countdown. However, reading the blog again solved this problem, as we were reminded of the seemingly endless supply of dull and pretentious posts the website produces. Of course, by the tone of András Szántó’s piece pondering Vuitton handbag sales in Museums or The Transom discussing national markets and race you’d think there were all kinds of fresh thoughts on the table. One only need refer to last January’s post and comments on ArtReview’s myspace blog to see just how far this new perspective takes us.

To the best of my knowledge, ArtWorld Salon hosts the only art blog in which professional qualifications are vetted prior to comment approval. In September they announced to readers that more commentors had been solicited, thus opening the flood gates for “informed” debate. Steven Kaplan is a regular on the site. (Warning: The Steven Kaplan link will take you to a blog that exists purely because people dislike him.  Some may find the site offensive.)

Chris Jordan, Skull with cigarette, 2007

Chris Jordan, Skull with Cigarette, detail, 2007

6. Chris Jordan - photography

“His staggering visualizations bring to life the throw away statistics to which we would otherwise be numb!” glows one typical blog response to the work of Chris Jordan, as though his photographic collages of disposables had imparted some kind of knowledge we didn’t know already. Facile gimmickry on the other hand didn’t seem to pass through anyone’s lips. Never failing to gravitate to a digestable working formula and easy message, it would appear the Internet nerdocracy is still run entirely by teenagers.

5. New Museum

Pretty much everyone agrees that while the New Museum front page may be easier to navigate than its predecessor, there’s a lot of work still to be done. For example, perhaps the developers could find a way to make the roll over text on their front page icons readable? I am told more images will be made available on the site — which is a good thing given the four they provide for their current Unmonumental show — but maybe while they’re at it they could ad the museum’s exhibition archives. It’s a rather gaping hole.

4. The Whitney Website

Assuming the New Museum is still working though these problems, they are still in a better spot than The Whitney. That institution may have finally given up on its lone plight to preserve wholly flash websites — that being its own — but they still have a long way to go before they give people a reason to use their site. Like tiny ugly drop down menus? If so, the Whitney’s got a site for you! Hate all those biennials? No problem, all but the last website are gone. Rather imagine exhibitions than view them? The Whitney believes in this too - all past exhibitions feature only one thumbnail, and a short press release if you’re lucky. Of course, two of the current shows list many more images, but there’s no way to easily click through pictures you like. Care to waste all kinds of time clicking on links you may not be interested in? The Whitney gives all this to you and more…

3. RISD

Institutions notoriously host awful websites, RISD the worst of the lot, opting for floating menu titles users have to chase across the screen to click on. These headlines prompt teany tiny drop down menus impossible to read or easily follow. The site makes us question the quality of their design department - even if they don’t have anything to do with it. As for the rest of the program, passing any speculative judgments based on the quality of its website will get prospective students no where. It would be nice however, if the site lived up to the school’s alumni.

2. Artnet and Artinfo

Will these sites forever suck? How long can a web publication exist without rss feeds? Artnet might tell you indefinitely, since they’ve been online since 1995, and still haven’t managed to accrue enough web savvy to add this basic feature. Artinfo might look even worse for having introduced an online magazine during a time when RSS feeds were standard, and still overlooking it.

More importantly however, both online magazines feature some of the worst writing in the business. Putting aside a variety of basic structural problems in the articles both sites publish, nobody cites accolades from an artnet or artinfo review because the magazines are so vapid. Artinfo invests virtually nothing in their writers which an array of light reporting pieces on the market and found stories reveals, and Artnet, while fairing slightly better sets the standard for lazy writing.

A comparison between Artnet’s pricey auction database and Artinfo’s free sales index won’t be happening here except to say collectors, gallerists and appraisers still have very little choice in regards to these services. Artinfo’s database is too incomplete to be competition to anyone, which means Artnet’s still the best game in town, even if it is full of errors. And it is.

1. Saatchi Gallery

Saatchi gallery is to the artworld what myspace is to musicians…big and ugly, but with no overnight success stories, fewer search options, and less mailable page templates. Basically, it sucks. We can’t even identify the “biggest” problem the site has, - it’s got so many - though certainly one of the larger ones stems from the fact that it lacks the basic tenets of popular social networking sites today; greater search and curatorial abilities. Perhaps a larger issue still however, lies within Saatchi’s conflicted means of gaining artists more exposure. What good for example, does it do an artist with representation to have Saatchi come up over their own gallery on the web? Not much. And what use is a site populated entirely by amateurs to the emerging artist or collector? Also not too much. We’re sensing some impending irreverence in YourGallery’s future.

Bonus: Failed non-profit redesigns of 2007. We invite regular visitors to read this post again for the first time!

Those wishing to maximize the openings they attend in one shot, would be well advised to go to Cheslea this Thursday between 6 and 8 pm. Over the last couple of days I’ve entered 100 plus listings into ArtCal the majority of them happening on the 10th. I have a few comments on shows picks, but before I get to that, an observation on press releases: The most common mistake this year seems to be forgetting to include specific opening information (ie assuming editors will know whether or not a gallery has a public reception without actually telling us). We will write to confirm any details we have question about of course –indeed in many cases this information is not listed because no reception is planned –, but remembering to include it will both give the gallery a better chance of making it into the artcal mailer, and keep me from pulling my hair out during particularly busy times.

On that note, every year we receive submissions from galleries who give us a show title and reception time, without closing or opening dates, a exhibition description, and a usable jpeg. Inevitably such galleries have a website that consists of their name only. Please remember that listings are made from the information given to us; if all we have is an opening time and a show title, we can’t fill in the fields required to upload the exhibition.

Screengrab Art Fag City

Artnet might finally have some competition on their hands with artreview.com’s new site now launched in beta. The magazine programmers are still working out a few of the bugs on this site, but barring a few glitches (I’m told the resolution of the project spaces will get much better) lets run down a few of the features that make us so excited about the online magazine.

Community functionality: Users can set up their own profiles, customize its appearance, and add friends. A youtube page allows members to upload relevant art videos, and the photo gallery facilitates the posting and tagging, rating and sharing of art. So far the gallery features a lot of crap, but this is the case with all community driven sites, and unlike Saatchi’s YourGallery, there are at least tools provided to sort through it. This kind of functionality will be incredibly useful for those searching the web for like minded artists and/or art as will Spotlight, a feature I’m told has yet to be launched, described by editor James Westcott as Digg for the art world.

Art Finder: This function promises to yield great results once the database becomes more robust, but even at present, typing in the name of any fairly established artist will yield a fair number of galleries representing their work. I expect we’ll see greater search depth, and more in the way of images as the site develops.

News, Blogs, and Reviews: Frequently updated, and EQUIPPED WITH RSS FEEDS! Look out artnet, artinfo and Saatchi gallery, you’ve got some real competition now!

Rhizome.org screencapture AFC

Our favorite non-profit asks for support this year from generous readers such as yourself. With only $8,000 left to raise in their 30,000 dollar campaign goal, Rhizome promises to direct these funds towards promoting greater online participation, expanded editorial coverage, and creating larger commission grants. One look at their relaunched website will tell you how far your funds will go with this organization; The new editorial content on their front page enriches the substance of their previous reblog ten fold, their site increases the visiblity of artists even though the work appears in a smaller column, (the site is so well designed I admittedly visit it sometimes purely for its beauty), and the calender function, and message boards really encourage and enrich discussion amongst Rhizome members. Donate here and watch the difference your funds can make to the new media community.