3 Sites to Look at, Visual Art on the Net

This post will be a bit scattered, but the general theme is Visual Tidbits. Large, small, many, few, finite, endless…artful?

Central Question: Can the world wide web act as art gallery? Insofar as we frame collections of web pages as “sites”, does the internet enable new spaces and modes of viewing?

Site #1 Question: Can the online sampling gallery move us?

For a while I’ve been meaning to highlight the site VVORK.COM (that’s two “v”s), but kept confusing the address. It’s one of those pages that lets you scroll down into oblivion, as it features posts after post of art in a huge range of media. There’s no commentary on the works, beyond name, artist, year, and media used. It’s a bit overwhelming in the same way that spending an hour wandering through a huge gallery is, only you don’t move through space, you just scroll. And here, the emphasis is on curated eclecticism. VVork draws on technology, installation pieces, found art, and new media, among many other sources. I’ve found some really neat projects through this site and it tends to whet my creative appetite, when it doesn’t entirely wear me out.

Found this one when curiosity had me browsing through the nominees for the 2008 bloggies. As its name implies, DAILY DOSE OF IMAGERY is a blog that posts one photo every day. The images are large format and generally relate to cities and architecture. I would imagine some people check back everyday to see only the latest photo, but my tendency is to view it like other photo blogs where you can click back in time until your eyes fog over. Alongside Toronto’s daily dose of imagery in the bloggie category for Best Canadian Blog is Montreal’s saidthegramophone. [Not much else interesting to me in other categories though] Also, if you’re into photography or design or architecture, daily dose of imagery has a huge list of links that I would recommend.

Site #3 Question: What sort of world are we shopping for?

Brian Ulrich has a great series of photos called COPIA that I discovered on Luce Beaulieu’s blog on sustainable development and artmaking, Article. This series by Ulrich focuses on American consumerism and consumption in relation to social stratification and material culture. His shots of objects and people in commercial spaces make apparent the absurdity of these environments, and its causes in, and effects on, the human psyche. The piece is divided into RETAIL, THRIFT, and BACKROOMS. Since this one isn’t a blog, it’s got finite content for its audience. I think it’s the most powerful of the three sites I’ve looked at in this post and I’m curious to check out more of Ulrich’s work as he posts future series.

Final Question: Who did I borrow this question heading format from?

[And remember to vote each day for your favourite international street style photos on STREET CLASH, featuring work from indyish’s photoblogger, event organizer, and lovely lady, Marilis Cardinal.]