After looking at a net art project by artist Julia Scher, Joy Garnett
wrote:

i came across this by accident. has anyone out there navigated this yet?
it's really amazing.

http://www.sfmoma.org/EXHIB/scher/map.htm

Frederic Madre replied:

pfff. not for me:

it's in boring new flash, it takes ages to load each fat page, is bugged
(got a 404 somewhere), and generally says nothing… much. or does it ?

carmin also replied:

i'm sad too… i don't have time to wait for it to load (several MINUTES
remaining! Won't it be nice when we ALL have T3s or something?) i'll
check the site out in June, when the slow load will match my slower
pace… by then the bugs might be fixed & i'll be happy!

Joy Garnett wrote:

i am so easily seduced by preliminary visuals (I didn't have any problem
with slow downloads or 404's) that it takes me a while to see that
something may not have the dimension that I had at first believed… the
julia Scher site is fun at first, and irreverent in ways that resonate
for me, but after the first viewing there seems no need to go back. The
several mildly interactive areas loop in a finite, predictable way. The
site is a literal web version of the gallery installations, which I
like, but which suffer from the same limitations.

Patrick Lichty:

First of all, I have a cable modem, and the installation came up fairly
quickly, but for an online installation per se, I would personally have
streamlined the site a bit so that the user would be able to view it a
little easier. However, this may fit well into the usual power discourse
that Scher makes visible in her work.

I guess my feeling of ambivalence towards the site lies in the fact that
although I was able to enter the site fine and dandy, there was a
certain level of depth in the content that I felt was missing. As was
said by others that saw the physical site, they had felt the same when
they saw the installation. So, I then question whether this is part of
Julia's message? The seduction of the technology and the power
structures that create it, with the only thing for us to do is to be
lulled inside the side show. Are we merely to hop into bed for the sheer
seduction value and to question why we want to do it merely because one
thinks it's cool…

Hmmm…

It was a fairly interesting site, and I always love her sound…

+ + +

Yael Kanarek asked:

I was having a hard time getting beyond the 2 yellow icons. Or is that
what I should be looking at?

Joy Garnett answered:

If you scroll to the "center" of your screen you will see a third,
undulating "icon" thing–click that to enter. Then there's another
yellow thing that bounces like a tennis ball–you have to catch one and
click; there's some of julia's sexy robot voice wafts in and out, with
various remonstrances; then you get taken in… there are various
choices that lead you each to linked interfaces.

+ + +

James Buckhouse wrote:

The sfmoma julia sher installation seems to work more like a net.art
piece than the web site. (although I enjoyed the web site as well…)
This to me is fabulous!!! It appears to use the form of
sculpture/installation to discuss the digital media issues of
transmission, replication, multiple authorship, and our relationship to
our bodies that seem to be at the core of what is often articulated in
net.art. (Her installation also deals with other issues such as the
institution and security.) It's a great time to hang out in the
installation for a while. Enjoy what's going on. I believe that she had
a technical team working on it with her. Anyone here help?

Ian Campbell:

Multiple authors? then why does Julia's picture keep coming up at one
point? This website would have appealed to me more when I was 16 and Max
Headroom was still on. Very well done eye candy.

Isn't net.art supposed to be DIY? I'd have more respect for her if she
slaved over her own javascript.

stickman:

i don't think DIY is as important as understanding the pains and
tribulations of that code. i.e. platform compatibility, inherent traits
and behaviors, syntax etc.

whereas something like snarg comes off with a sense of poetry (where i
recognize java functions being abstracted / given alternate meanings, i
get the feeling that scher's work is less intimate with the possibilites
of the code and therefore more typical in use.

i guess i agree, with the added possibility of having slaved over the
code.