Pixel Plunder©

MTAA Collective - "Ten Digital Readymades"
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Statement:

Once upon a time, Marcel Duchamp brought the words "ready" and "made" together to describe a method of creating art by the act of selection, re-naming and re-contextualization. On the first of July 2000, MTAA placed the words "Ready Made" into a commercial search engine. The ten resulting websites have become Website Unseen #25: Ten Digital Ready-Mades.

Following Duchamp's methods, we have divided the Ten Digital Ready-Mades into two types. The first five websites are only modified by means of their selection, re-naming and re-contextualization by linking from the Ten Digital Ready-Mades website. The source code from the other five websites has been modified to create Assisted Digital Ready-Mades which reside on MTAA's server.

In the act of resounding Duchamp's methods, the Ten Digital Ready-Mades image the state of the Net. As links are followed from the site, the line from the "artwork" to the commercial net are at some point crossed without fanfare. As the Net evolves,reorganizes and perhaps decays over time, the joining of the artwork and commercial sites may result in broken links and 404s. The artwork also relies on the viewer's ability to navigate and judge what is the boundary of the site. As the chosen websites change, so does this boundary.

It is in this selection of unstable media as subject that the Ten Digital Ready-Mades begin to break from Duchamp's methods to become relevant to our time and experience. Copy and paste has become a standard in contemporary culture but the ability to hold the subject still, to draw a contextual line around a subject, is becoming gratefully lost.

And speaking of contextual lines, we recommend viewing the larger work in which the Ten Digital Ready-Mades are located. This meta-work, Website Unseen, may be found at http://mteww.com/websiteunseen.

Bio:

MTAA (M. River & T. Whid Art Associates) is a Brooklyn-based conceptual and net art collaboration of the artists Mark River and T.Whid. Recently exhibited through The Art Entertainment Network (http://aen.walkerart.org) created by the Walker Art Center, at Art & Idea in Mexico City, and through 9/9 Review of Practical Art, Paris, France. MTAA's online artwork and more information at MT Enterprises WorldWide http://www.mteww.com.

> > LAUNCH EVENT - 9.21.01 featuring: JOHN OSWALD (PLUNDERPHONICS) hosted by INSTANT COFFEE
> > ESSAY- Commonality, pixel property, seduction: As If by MATTHEW FULLER

Pixel Plunder© is co-presented by InterAccess Electronic Media Art Centre
Contact the curators: Michael Alstad and Michelle Kasprzak