Re: [-empyre-] Is it digital art?

[Sean Cubitt <seanc@waikato.ac.nz>]

. . . and as to my home page, and to anyone's homepage . . .

there is no private space. Privacy was the privilee of a small
european/US elite for a brief period between about 1800 and 1950.
Today only wife-beaters and tax-evaders protect their privacy. The
web is a place for the interface between the pblic and the intimate.
Of course.

But is it art?

The poet Frank O'Hara used to speak of his poems as telephone calls
that never got made. Full of jokes and references only the missing
person from the far end would get; but as personal, immediate and
ephemeral as a phone conversation. Homepages aren't architecural
monuments but little gifts, often for very specific people, that you
allow other browsers to drift through as they will. L'écume des
jours, as Vian had it: the froth of days. Vita longa, ars brevis.
--
Sean Cubitt * Screen and Media Studies * University of Waikato *
Private Bag 3105 * Hamilton * New Zealand * seanc@waikato.ac.nz * T:
+64 (0)7 838 4543 * F: +64 (0)7 838 4767

http://www.waikato.ac.nz/film