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Benjamin Eakins

Abstract

When discussing “useless” web pages in regards to their existence as works of art, particularly regarding their place within an art paradigm, there are many factors to take into consideration. In this article, Benjamin Eakins states that web pages which fall under the “useless” category may do so for numerous reasons such as providing meaningless data, presenting specific personal details, or offering irrelevant and insufficient information. Eakins discusses how these pages invite the viewer through the entertainment of confrontation and absurdity with the use of interactivity, randomness, and social purposes. In addition, the nature of these “useless” web pages are compared to that of the Fluxus movement as well as Walter de Maria’s writings. Walter de Maria asserts in his writings that “meaningless” works that do not serve conventional or commercial purposes construct the most significant contemporary forms of art. Furthermore, the anti-art characteristics of Dada are discussed in relation to the anti-information qualities and properties of “useless” web pages, as well as their increased separation from conventional web structure through random links that lead to unpredictable web pages. Despite the existence of these web pages within the world of art as new media artworks, Eakins highlights their lack of artistic consideration from the points of view of the creators, the viewers, and the web’s search engines. Web pages exist amongst other artworks that cannot be easily contextualized in which Eakins bridges the artistic qualities of web pages to the characteristics of folk art, where the works reside past the boundaries of context and theory.

Preservation Process

Archived from http://switch.sjsu.edu/archive/nextswitch/switch_engine/front/front.php%3Fartc=54.html. Documentation of the preservation processes used for this collection is available at https://github.com/NickSzydlowski/switch. Metadata for this item was created and augmented by Riley Mendoza, Spring 2022, ART 104.

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