Shoshana Cohen: An Artist’s Kit for Survival
Title:
- An Artist’s Kit for Survival
Artist(s) and People Involved:
Exhibiting Artist(s):
Symposium:
Artist Statement:
During the last two years I have been engaged on a journey into the unknown: Searching for art on the net, trying to see it all, attempting to understand the possibilities and potential. An art site is now very different from the electronic catalogues prevalent several years ago. I have been realizing this journey both has a spectator and a creator. While traditional artists are also consumers of art, net based art allows for a dynamic interaction that totally changes the balance between artist and viewer. Questions raises questions concerning art on the net. The roles of the artist and audience are interlaced. The questions could be raised by the artist or the audience. The answers are in the medium itself. The questions are obvious, the answers can become perceptible traveling in the site. Different paths, different viewers, different moods offer altered answers. The site is organized in a straightforward manner, but navigation options can be manipulative, side-tracking the viewer from the main road, creating different contexts offering different interpretations. The experience of the journey is the experience of the site. I wish to convey the feeling of the speed of change. Speed and WWW are at this time a contradiction of terms. Probably the most common characteristic of art on the net is the time it takes to view this art. In many ways this is a sketch, a skeleton of a site that one day when bandwidth allows will be executed in the way it was meant to be. For now I hope that the viewer will be engaged in the journey, completing missing images in his imagination, engaged in the experience, thus becoming a collaborator in the creation of the site.
