The internet often seems like an art playground. Works designed specifically for the net tend to be light, playful, entertaining... But I rarely feel that the artist thought much about the meaning of the work. Nice and fun and sometimes surprizing are the usual adjectives that come to mind. Daydreaming allowed. Thinking not always required.
Here is a work, called Fisheye TV, that, although technically and aesthetically it has its limits, is more than just an interactive toy.
Its author, Brian Kim Stefans, is better known as a poet, though he has been creating net work since 1998. His most known net art work is "The Dreamlife of Letters", a dada work gone flash. Maybe I'm not enthousiastic about it because it's been done by Dada without the need for flash? Maybe, because I have a friend, called Tadeusz Wierzbicki, a wonderful, crazy person, owner of a light and shadow laboratory, who made a light performance (yes, you understood well - light performance) about the letter "i" - more beautiful than any other Dada or Dreamlife or visual poetry art I have seen (a few pics of some of Wierzbicki's recent work can be seen on this French site).
In any case, this new work by Brian Kim Stefans is another story. Since I'm on my positive challenge, I will only say that I like the fact that I can see that there is a person, with thoughts and beliefs, behind the work. Hopefully, work like that will inspire others to go much further still, to dig, to sweat, and to enchant us all. Or at least a part of us.
(There are other works from this series by Stefans here - though I found their level quite uneven)
