I am an internet artist. I used to be a poet. For a long time the only thing that mattered to me was being a poet. Ever since my first aol account, however, I started messing around with art on the internet.
It is an exciting and– I think in hindsight we’ll say– brutal time to be an internet artist. The tools out there for making art (i.e. anything that allows one to put stuff on the internet) are remarkably unfocused on creating art. I think that’s fine, since art-making is not the primary purpose of Flickr. That doesn’t mean people don’t make art w/ Flickr. Of course they do. (I don’t mean “publish” art, I mean “make” art.)
Anyway, I like making art using tools that people don’t think you’re supposed to use to make art. Amazon aStore is a great example. They keep adding new features and making this thing better, and I keep using these new e-commerce features to make art.
One new feature is custom category pages. It allows you to display a custom set of products under a category (“electronics”, for instance) and put in some custom text to introduce the products.
Or, under automotive, restrict the products to “Dodge Stratus” and let people know I’m doing it “for all ya’ll middle managers out there: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFXsjofFKD4“
Or, my current favorite, which is my love node to Deirdre, under the Beauty category, restricting the search to “Irish” and noting that “Deirdre is the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met.”
Cyrano
