Art & Perception

Tomorrow I will discuss an art gallery/blog website based in part on the discussion we had last week. more… »

If you are an artist, what kind of website do you want to have for your own use?

As an artist:

• Do you want a web gallery? (for a some good examples, see David’s site, Steve’s site, and Franklin’s site)
• Do you want a blog, an online version of a diary?

I think many artists would like to have some kind of combination of these (unrelated) things. The problem is that the off-the-shelf solutions such as WordPress or Blogger are not designed for artists’ needs. That is why a lot of us spend/waste a lot of time tinkering with our websites, to customize them for our specific goals.

Recently Rex brought something exciting to my attention, a new version of WordPress that allows one to host many blogs. That is to say, if someone designs a good artist website template, they can allow other people to create their own blogs with this template on demand, for free — much like you can already get a WordPress blog for free.

To be useful for many artists, such a system should address the various issues that artists consider in a website.

What do you want in an artist website? Can you give examples of sites that have good design features?

Lisa Call is the head site admin on Art & Perception (A&P). She does a great job. She has a full time job as an artist and mother, and another full time job in the computer industry. When she is not doing these labors, she writes great blog posts.

Every extra detail on the site means extra work for Lisa. Every sidebar feature is a point of contention, a potential source of conflict.

I say, strip this site down to the bare minimum for functionality.

more… »

A dialogue with Rex Crockett, Arthur Whitman, and Karl Zipser; artwork by Rex Crockett.

KARL: This is the first post at our team blog’s new location, ArtAndPerception.com. What should we talk about?

ARTHUR: The topic of Art & Perception‘s future is perfect.

REX: What do you think we could accomplish? In what direction do you think we should go?

KARL: The most obvious goal for most of us is to become the best artists that we can be. Another goal is to make money doing it, or at least to survive. If Art & Perception is to be useful, rather than a distraction, it should help us with these key goals.

REX: Karl, interaction with other artists will definitely help with these goals you state. With other artists, it’s possible to explore new ideas before you take action on them. Other artists are more willing to experience edgy work. They can see through the rough edges to the inner jewel. more… »

A reader mentioned that my RSS feed was not in order. I didn’t even know I had a site feed, but now I have become a dedicated RSS user, for my own site as well as for other people’s. I realize I’ve long been yearning for something like RSS. [Below is an example of Candy Minx’s blog as seen in my newsreader, click image to enlarge]

Some time back we debated the virtue of minimalist site design. What RSS lets readers do is to take the content out of your site and display it in a minimalist context. Every site has a different “look and feel” which the webmaster lovingly crafts. RSS let’s you bypass all of that and get the content in pure form.

Which means, you should read your own blog in an RSS news reader to see how it looks. I got some surprises.

As for the art of web design, site feed suggests that the minimalist approach is best. If readers can bypass your site’s style, then it makes sense to keep flourishes in web design to a minimum, and focus on the content itself.

Or do I have the conclusion backwards?

The answer to the question, “What is art?” will no longer be “That which is in museums and galleries”, but, “That which looks good on the internet.”

I’m not so concerned about the accuracy of the prediction; I find it a reasonable bet. What bothers me is the extent to which the digitalized image separates us from the essential physical character of the artwork.

In creating an artwork, especially from imagination, the nature of the materials influences the process. The subtle traces of this which remain can be some of the most powerful aspects of the physical work itself. And yet these are easily lost in the digital reproduction. A striking example I have seen of this is in Michelangelo’s drawings. The drawings which I studied in the recent exhibition in Haarlem have great power, but this is mostly lost in the internet reproductions.

The Sistine Chapel ceiling does as poorly on the internet as the study drawings, but for a different reason; the awesome, encompassing quality of the work is lost when it is reduced to a miniature flat image on the computer monitor.

If this can happen to Michelangelo, what are the implications for artists today who wish to use the web as their exhibition space? Will the medium distort and degrade the artist’s methods as he or she attempts to create “That which looks good on the internet”?

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Related:
Fall of the Art World