The Internet was originally created for the government and the exchange of information between universities in the 1960’s. It was not until the mid 1990's did most of the general public know what it was and had used it. Today more than 1.09 billion people use the Internet. In the past decade the Internet has transformed in astronomical and creative ways. It has become a way for people to express themselves, meet new people, reconnect with others, as well as serve its original purpose of sharing documents and information. The Internet has influenced our culture in many different ways such as people discuss and joke about items found on Internet, and companies must now have their own website in order to flourish. People do not often regard the Internet as a place for art or creative processes. Quite the opposite is true. The use of contests, personal expression, and video has had quite a significant impact on the creation of artwork by inventing new mediums, and uniting people.
Contests & Challenges
Contests and challenges are popular forms of entertainment on the World Wide Web. One of the earliest and most popular contests was called Photoshop Tennis. It is usually played between two players, and it begins with an image one player receives. The image is passed back and forth between the players for the number of rounds determined before game play all the while making adjustments in Photoshop. Once the image is completed judges determine which player made the best moves in his or her turn and declare a winner. This contest creates some very beautiful and unique artwork and encourages collaboration. People that may have never met could come together because of the Internet.
10 Second club is a popular website (http://www.10secondclub.net) for animators to become involved with. The goal of this contest is to create the best character animation from the 10 seconds of audio (usually from a movie) provided by the site. Contestants have only a month to develop their creations. Once their animations are done they are asked to post them on the website for everyone to view and vote for. The prizes for this contest are undoubtedly some of the best on the Internet. Anything from iPods to full free versions of 3D software such as Maya are occasionally offered as rewards.
A type of challenge that is not very well known is one called a “blend challenge.” These challenges are usually produced by people with personal websites, typically younger webmasters in the teen-twenty age range. A series of images of the webmaster’s choice are given to the public in order to compile a new image which many call a “blend.” These same sites often have variations on challenges such as colorizing an image, or adding just effects/text to an image rather than combining pictures. Similar contests happen with icons for places like LiveJournal or AOL Instant Messenger. The awards for this challenge are nowhere near like the 10 Second Club, but are still meaningful to the winner. The awards are typically small graphics that the contestants can post on their own website.
Self Expression & Diversity
Another interesting way the Internet has united people and created art is through charity. The Internet is a fantastic way to reach many people from all over the world, so naturally charities have utilized this medium for their cause. Recently a site called The One Million Masterpiece is making an effort to create one million images from people around the world to show the world's diversity as well as to help raise money for several different global charities. This site utilizes web technology and applications created by Google to provide an advanced paint program for people that register. Every user creates their image with the same program so that there is some unity and a level playing field, yet there is still the ability to create extremely diverse images.
Self expression has taken off since the inception of the Internet. From the smallest task of changing one's font face and color, or editing a profile, to blogging, posting poetry, conversing on message boards and chats to creating your own website with whatever content you want. Anyone can create a website in less than 5 minutes. There are many sites that offer free accounts with a certain amount of space in exchange for some advertising on the website. Some of the longest running sites like these are Angelfire, Geocities, and Tripod. These sites offer templates and tutorials on how to create a website. Just recently Google started offering free web space to people with Google accounts that is very easy to use and does not embed any advertisements in it. These free sites were often used by people for creating pages about their lives, or post their own personal beliefs.
This trend caused journal sites and blogs to become popular. The most successful journal site is Livejournal.com. These types of sites keep emerging and other networking sites such as MySpace or Facebook are implementing journal/blog features to their site structures. People are also able to express themselves through displaying their artwork on sites such as deviantArt that offers free hosting. Not only can people express themselves online with still images, but also with moving ones too.
The Video Revolution
With the widespread use of broadband connections as well as better more affordable technology becoming available to the public, video has become a more popular medium than ever. Several years ago watching video online was more of a chore than a pleasure. Every site seemed to have their own web player, and the videos would almost never play smoothly in that they would stop and start, only partially play, or not play at all. Now it is more enjoyable since it appears that there is a more streamlined process for creating video, and connections are now fast enough to keep up with the data transfer of videos. Music videos were amongst the first type of videos to be played online. AOL and Launch.com (now a part of Yahoo! Music) were some of the first places that had these videos.
YouTube and GoogleVideo have created a new sensation in the past few years in that they offer free web space for people to upload their own personal videos. This has provided great opportunities for filmmakers, video artists, and animators to get their work seen. One can repost videos anywhere online with sample code given from YouTube’s site. This and the fact that people within the YouTube community are able to view those videos it permits for a very wide audience. Some of these videos become so popular that they are mentioned on network television. The Today show even invited the band that played the popular “Numa Yay” song that was in a video (a young man lip synched to this song on a video placed on the Internet) play on their show.
WebJunk is a TV show created by VH1 just to showcase videos that have gained popularity. The show counts down the top 10 videos that were submitted or found during the week and play most or part of them on the show. It is mostly a commentary by the host poking fun at the content or saying how ridiculous people are for watching it. Just the fact that a TV show was made based on items purely from the Internet really shows what an impact it has had on our culture.
Television networks have not only talked about videos from the Internet, but they have also placed their own videos online. This past season ABC has started placing popular shows online in streaming video form after its initial airing. This has proven to be popular since people can watch at their leisure and sit through fewer commercials. The Fox network has done something similar with their shows. They, however; make use of MySpace’s website for their videos. If people wish to buy and keep a digital copy of TV Shows, Music Videos, Animated Shorts, or Movies on their hard drive iTunes also offers that service. Internet downloads has actually saved some TV shows from being cancelled, such as the Office on NBC. It is not one of the highest rated shows, yet it is one of the most downloaded ones.
Performance artists could even use this video feature to their advantage. They could simply post videos of their work online, or even create performances using Internet technology. They could do a piece in a chat room or collaborate with other people to perform certain tasks online at the same time to create a piece.
Art for Sale
Many people have taken to selling their artwork online whether it is through eBay, deviantArt, or their own personal site. An interesting concept that has used the Internet is http://www.onethousandpaintings.com/ and it is a site that has paintings of the numbers 1-1000 hand painted for sale. It has been surprisingly popular, since Spring 2006 it has sold 706 paintings. Seeing something like this makes one believe that Van Gogh could have prospered while he was alive if he only had an Ethernet cord.
Video Game Fever
The World Wide Web has also become a great platform for video games. In the past video games have typically been just for home consoles, hand held devices, and local use on a computer’s hard drive. Now people can connect with each other through the Internet with their computer or console and compete against one another without having to be in the same room. Games, such as World of Warcraft, have been specifically designed for this type of gaming experience. Other games that are not designed for online play have used the Internet to help further develop components for the game. This happened with The Sims. Users began creating their own objects, skins, and variations of items already in the game. The game creators were aware of this and then started an online community portion of their site for users to upload their items and share with the world. Some users create better and more beautiful items than the original game artists.
The program Flash has been applied to many websites for its unique interactive capabilities. Many games have been created with this program that anyone can play if they have the web plug-in installed. The site Neopets uses Flash as well as web scripting for their games. That site is very community driven in that it allows its users to compete in weekly art contests, and to compete with each other. This site appeals to a wide age range of people, since the premise is to create and take care of a virtual pet. With the encouragement of creating artwork and writing articles about one’s pet, some fascinating pieces are developed. Prizes are awarded to the user’s account and Neopet in return for some of these pieces.
Unknown Art & Artists
The Internet has allowed people to become artists that may have never even considered it. This new form of communication has opened up new doors for every type of artist out there. It has also caused many people to change how they evaluate the value of the Internet and how it should be dealt with. Web design, interactivity, and ASCII art is something that the web has helped flourish and help people cross new boundaries. The uses for the Internet keep growing and changing, especially for artists, maybe soon people will start acknowledging and treating Internet related art with more respect.
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