Alexei Shulgin on Sun, 4 Aug 96 19:57 METDST


[Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]

nettime: indexes.html or Multiple Identity


indexes.html
or Multiple Identity

right at http://sunsite.cs.msu.su/wwwart

Homepage is one's identity in the Net. The first impression of  a 
homepage often crucially affects our wish to go deeper into it. 
A human being can't have different faces at a discretion, a book can't 
have different covers simultaneously, a song or film can't have few 
beginnings. A homepage on the contrary can easily be multiple. You don't 
like that one? - Switch to another! 
Making choices is an unresolvable problem. Why this or that? Why do you 
think you like black pants and Macintosh? Choosing something definite we 
immediately limit ourselves. The necessity of making choices offends me. 
Karl Marx said that freedom is realised necessity. I would say that 
freedom is above all freedom from necessity of making choices. We should 
not forget that people that new very well what to choose gave us fascism, 
bolshevism and postmodernism.

Thinking about Moscow WWWArt Centre's homepage I found out that:
1. I am not able to give a proper face to it because I don't know what is 
"proper".
2. I don't have to - it can have multiple face created by different 
artists.
3. I can shift off at least one choice to others (viewers).
4. It's a good and natural (unlike many clumsy attempts to bring 
different egos together in the Net) chance to make a collaborative 
project with other people and create a multi-site piece spread through 
the Net with a collective author.

I see it like this.
Once switched to Moscow WWWArt Centre's URL a viewer will see a list of 
available Moscow WWWArt Centre's homepages - all created by different 
artists. Each homepage is completely it's author's creature and 
intellectual property. It may contain a link to (and from) it's creator 
pages. The only limitation from Moscow WWWArt Centre is that this page 
must contain three links - to three groups (and sublists) that you can 
find at it's present state: Information, Communication and 
Self-expression (winf.htm, wcom.htm and wart.htm respectively). These 
links can appear as words, GIFs, maps, forms etc. I would welcome if 
artists create Moscow WWWArt Centre's homepages as parts of their current 
projects and make links to it from within their sites.
I hope that Moscow WWWArt Centre's project will stimulate artists to 
develop it or/and give impulses to new projects. 

-- 
...............................
.....moscow wwwart centre......
http://sunsite.cs.msu.su/wwwart
...............................
--
*  distributed via nettime-l : no commercial use without permission
*  <nettime> is a closed moderated mailinglist for net criticism,
*  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
*  more info: majordomo@is.in-berlin.de and "info nettime" in the msg body
*  URL: http://www.desk.nl/~nettime/  contact: nettime-owner@is.in-berlin.de