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Webbies promise awards, 'The Ultimate Bookmark'
By Patti Hartigan, Globe Staff, 03/12/99
As I write this column, my computer is being attacked by an army of little
Netscape boxes bouncing around the monitor screen. They're going ba-ding,
ba-boom, like browser windows on amphetamines. This is not a joke, nor is it a
virus. It's art: conceptual art. Cyber art. Caroming art. This performance of
sorts is brought to you by the folks at http://www.jodi.org -- enter at your
own risk.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. The invasion of the dancing boxes began
after a chat with Tiffany Shlain, executive producer of the Webby Awards.
Trumpeted as ''the Oscars of the Internet,'' the awards honor the best (and
the strangest) Web sites in 22 categories, from art and science, fashion and
film, to just plain weird. The ceremony, set for Thursday, began three years
ago as a downbeat digerati gathering but has evolved into an upscale event at
San Francisco's Herbst Theatre.
Anyway, Shlain is bullish on the ceremony, hailing its significance in the
Big Picture. ''Our nominees reflect the growth of the Web, which has
infiltrated every part of society,'' she says. The roster
(http://www.webbieawards.com) provides an ''ultimate bookmark,'' she vows, a
guide to the hottest trends and sites on line.
It seemed like a bright idea to peruse the list, searching for the inner
secrets, the deep existential meaning of the exhaustive yet exhilarating World
Wide Web. Several hours of ''research'' revealed one simple truth: You can
surf forever and have a few good rides, but you can never probe the depths of
this massive medium. It also affirmed a few things most folks already know:
Webmasters can be commercial giants, college professors, or kids with a
particular obsession. Some folks are in it for money (we skipped the Amazonian
e-commerce nominees); some folks trade information; others seek a few laughs.
In the interest of high culture (or slavish allegiance to alphabetical
order), we started with the arts. The ParkBench Web site (at
http://www.cat.nyu.edu/parkbench/) treats you to a gigantic click-on slide
show, eye-candy for empty hours. An ingenious site called the Multicultural
Recycler (http://www.shoko.calarts.edu/ftildealex/recycler.html) creates a
form of digital found art. It fans the Web for live images from Web cams in
dorm rooms and boudoirs, mixes them up, and creates a recycled collage. It's
the brainchild of California artist Amy Alexander. ''When Web cameras became
popular, it seemed like Andy Warhol's 15 minutes of fame coming to fruition,''
she says. ''I wanted to take that idea and spoof it: If these are the
celebrities of the day, I would do the cultural recycling of the day and make
an art piece.''
Next stop: jodi.org. When you enter the site, your browser breaks up into
those tiny dancing boxes, and when you frantically try to catch them, a larger
window turns into a surreal mirror image of your own desktop. A Net search (on
Excite) revealed a few artspeak descriptions and this bit from HotWired:
''This nameless, anonymous . . . and seemingly purposeless Web site is an
immense labyrinth of dead ends, blink tags, grainy GIFs, primary colors, and
oversized code. One page turns up grainy pictures of pigeons.''
Try as I might, I couldn't find the pigeons. Darn. But I did find an e-mail
address and fired off a message to jodi.org's creators, whoever they might
be.
Back to the search on the ''ultimate bookmark.'' One of the nominations in
the community category is http://www.ivillage.com, which promises ''real
solutions for real women.'' The top story was a primer on how to ''banish
belly bulge,'' but ultimate abs aside, the site does offer some discussion of
serious topics.
The fashion category boasts some sites that are more amusing -- and less
Victoria's Secret-like -- than you might think. The New York-based
http://www.papermag.com explores such topics as ''cultural sushi'' and
''tchotchke of the Week.'' ''Ask Mr. Mickey'' is a ''demented weekly
schmashion column,'' which is pretty rich.
The film category features http://www.darkhorizons.com, which is run by a
20-year-old from Sydney named Garth Franklin who combines the dish of Mr.
Showbiz with the dirt of Matt Drudge.
The rest of the categories cover all the hot topics on the Web, like the
buzz over MP3 and the rise of Net radio. Surfing became a blur of usual
suspects in the zine category (Feed, Salon, Nerve, Slate). The weird category
is, well, weird. Funny, the only site we couldn't access was in this category,
the one at www.unamerican.com. Maybe it's a right-wing conspiracy.
Just when it was time to stop surfing and finish this column, an e-mail
arrived from jodi.org, run by Flemish cyber artists Joan Heemskark and Dirk
Paesmans. ''The moving screens, in a way, disrupt the normal sense of a
browser,'' says Heemskark. The site frequently changes, leading the browser
on a surrealistic cyberchase and sometimes crashing the computer. And that's
part of the point: ''We want viewers to have the feeling that everything they
see cannot be taken for granted.''
The jodi.org duo brings an edge to the increasingly commercial Webbies,
which this year honor such titans of capitalism as EBay, Amazon, and, gulp,
the Gap. Webbie award speeches are limited to five words, and Paesmans says
his speech might be a countdown to a cyberblast. If he wins, he'll say,
''Five, four, three, two, one . . . '' And that will be the end of it.
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