[Realism Now!]  [Perf Art MAIN page]

The Performed WEB

The Aesthetics of WEB-based objects - including programming

See also: [Clone] [Simacrulum] [Simulation] [(art) concepts] [Art MovementsCulutural Markers] (as a part of symbolism) [Coerced performance] -[post post-modernism]- -[Performance, Absurd]- [Dada] [Dadaism] (an art "ism") [Performance frank: Realism Now!] [Frank's stuff] [The Performed Act] [Performed Art] [The Performed Art Act] [The Performed Art Technology] [The Performed Danse] [Performed Art: Filmed] [The Performed Performance] [The Performed Score] [Performed Text] [The Performed UFO's - including esp and modern physics] [Fluxus] [Street Art] [] [Interventionist Art] [Los Interioristas] [T.A.Z.] (Association for Ontological Anarchy) (Hakim Bey, chief janitor)

The Performed WEB

(including programming) On this page: {Intro} {The Cloned Web} {Web simacrula} {Web programming} (ie, scripting) {I/A web experience} (Inter/Active) {} {Links} {Bibliography}

Intro


See also: [
Clone] In this case, we have duplicated (probably through a direct download) portions of the www ("World Wide Web"; ie, the internet). Cloning has the advantage that the system is separated from the actual internet and as such immune (supposedly) to intervention from users on the real web. Also, cloning - since it can be selective allows for only certain pages (or certain kinds of pages) to be part of the "simulated web experience".

Web simacrula

See also: [
Simacrulum] [Simulation] In the case of a web simarculum, the web is copied but may have changes to it. As with a simulation, it attempts to mimic the original (actual) web but certain aspects are most likely to NOT be present. Thus, in terms of performance art the web simacrulum may have entirely invented behaviours. The main idea is that somehting that looks/acts like the web isn't really the web. If the user/viewer is aware of this (as in game play) then it allows for a more expansive level of I/A; eg, the user/player may destroy parts of the web simacrulum.

Web programming

Programming (scripting) is the means by which the web is made into a dynamic and responsive system. This is done "behind the scenes" in several ways: The web itself provides a so-called "server" system which is accesing the web itself and it's databases and providing a common base of behaviours. Scripting on the server can be accomplished via several programming languages; eg, Python, Java, Visual Basic, as well as HTML (and its variants; DHTML (dynamic), WHTML (wireless) - "Hyper Text Mark-Up Language". A "markup" language is a meta-language that is used to describe/specify a given behaviour or actual language. Specficially a markup language is designed to control the look and feel of the system; ie, how it appears to the user, and exactly what they are allowed to do with the various page. The other-side of the equation is the "client" - most commonly known as a "terminal" or simply the user's computer. Again the same sorts of scripting can occur on that - and will be separate from ANY activity on the server. But, of course, the programs running on the client and the server can be designed to interact. Thus, the client includes (usually) a browser (eg, Safari, Mozilla, Explorer, NetScape, etc) which itself (usually) runs a sub-set of the programs that the server does; eg, JavaScript rather than full Java (although technically speaking JavaScript is a different language than Java), or a restricted sub-set of Visual Basic. These restrictions are usually to limit the way that the web can modify the client's system.

I/A web experience

(Inter/Active) Interactive exeperiences indicate that the "state" of the web can be altered by the user, and the user's view of the web can be altered by the web itself. Note that the way pages can be displayed can be "locked down" so that they aren't inter-active; eg, a "read only" document which can't be copied to the user's system. Of course, a user can look at the screen and either copy word-for-word or photograph (with their hand pocket-camera, web-camera, etc) or sketch - what they see. The flow and changes of the way that the web pages are seen or interacted with are altered (usually) by programming - see above. In a fully inter-active version of a web experience/performance the web can be *permanently* altered by the user/viewer. And (since users/viewers are essentially hologrphic systems) they are almost certainly altered by *any* web experience - usually through processes such as learning, experience, and memory. Thus, "in the limit", the web experience mimics life experience.

Links


Bibliography