1. I’m Here and There [https://anthology.rhizome.org/i-m-here-and-there]
In I’m Here and There, Jonas Lund creates and uses a custom browser extension that reports every website he visits to http://imhereandthere.com/. I chose this as a Looking Outwards for my project because I’m interested in the idea of opting in to a cairn as a participant. There is nothing inherently tying the browser extension to Lund specifically in this project, so I imagined a version of this project where the browser extension was a public software that any user install and therefore opt in to. While this act of opting in is inherent in many of the telematic cairns we viewed in class, I’m interested in exploring this choice in particular.
2. Form Art [https://anthology.rhizome.org/form-art]
Form Art is Alexei Shulgin’s exploration of mundane HTML buttons and boxes as compositions. With this project also came a short-lived submission-driven competition wherein users were allowed to create their own form art. I chose this work as a Looking Outwards because I was immediately attracted to the abstract, reductive yet nostalgic visuals. I was also inspired by the concept of the button as an artistic element–as an abstract force that pushes you down a certain path. Viewing this work brought up strong memories of interactive texts, such as email, collaborative writing tools and text games. That Shulgin opens his idea and art form to user submissions is particularly important to my reception of Form Art as Internet art.
BONUS: Mezangelle [https://anthology.rhizome.org/mez-breeze]
I’m attracted to Mez Breeze’s Mezangelle for the same reasons as Form Art. I enjoy the poetry that arises from the reductiveness of the green terminal text, as well as the palpable undercurrent of programmatic rules that drives it. This work reminds me of the concept of readable code and code poetry. Much like using the HTML button as an artistic unit, I am fascinated by the idea of using functional blocks of text as modular visual elements.