I chose this site because when I was a very young child my dad was a bartender at a bowling alley. I have many fond memories of my dad when I think about or see bowling alleys. This connection created an interest in the site's content.
This site starts out with a very vivid, mostly red page. The
main image is in the middle of the page. It is a close-up of
a lane and you can see someone's feet and part of their legs.
It is a blurred image. On the upper left there are two black
and white images of pins being hit and then falling down, these
images look as though they are exploding. The image is in slow
motion and they repeat themselves. On the bottom left there is
a very graphic rectangular image in red with a red V shape. The
V shape holds a black ball with a white stripe, which says bowl
in red letters. When you click on this box you are brought to
a black page with letters. On the top of the page there are five
different links, which are small orange-red squares with some
of the bowling alley imagery. The first link on the left OVERVIEW
brings you to the bowling alley, "3-site installation".
The next link titled SPARE brings you to "traverses Minneapolis
Ten's texts". NEXT "continues through a single message".
By clicking onto the WRITE-IN button you can write-into the
site, "adding to the body of alien texts" and clicking
on STRIKE remixes a scramble of Minneapolis Ten and alien texts.
You must click on the red word "enter" to get into
the site. You are warned that the site contains some mature subject
matter and discretion is advised.
When one clicks on "enter" it puts you on a page that
is mostly black with some images that look like parts of the moon
and some letters. The type used is somewhat block letters and
then some look like they have been cut out of a newspaper. I
first clicked onto the OVERVIEW image. This brought me to the
Bryant-Lake Bowl of Minneapolis. The page is also black with
four white lined triangular images and there are white and red
letters. The top two triangular shapes have images of pins in
the middle and in the left one there is a film, which shows some
very close-up images of people who are somewhat sexual. You can
see some nudity. It is a very small image and hard to really
make it out.
When you click on the Walker Art Center it brings you to a page
that shows some photos of the bowling lane at the Walker Art Center
and explains and describes the artwork. It then explains that
there are pinsetters that are being filmed and they are whom you
are seeing on the other page. This link also makes other links
to the artists available to the viewer. When one clicks onto
the WRITE-IN it puts you on a black page with the moon images
and the writing is done in the same fashion as before only the
letters come up at random times. You must wait until all the letters
come up to read what it says. There are boxes underneath the
writing, which allows you to write your own text below their text.
When you click onto the STRIKE image it brings you to another
black page and letters slowly emerge. The letters are of different
quality; some look like newspaper print while others are in color
and yet others look like stone. You must wait for all the letters
to appear in a random order to read what is there.
This site is a cybernetic installation that was commissioned by
the Walker Art Center. The installation was a 50-foot long flush
built stainless steel surface lane at Walker Art Center. It
had live actual bowling at a local hangout, Bryant Lake Bowl,
in Minneapolis. The artists were using the Web to complete the
artwork. In this case I would say that the artists here were
using the Web as a very important part of their media.
The art that they created is very dynamic and interactive. With
this website the artists have created notions of space and time.
They have created a space in which the viewer has become a participant
at the bowling alley, the art center and on the web. As the viewer
enters the different sites their participation changes.
The artists use objects that are animated which take on sign,
symbol and metaphorical meanings. They used digital sensor data
from the bowling lane which was transmitted via ISDN to the gallery
and onto the website. Because the site interacts with the pinsetters
the metaphors are continually changing. For one person the pins
are related to their falling heart, and for another person the
metaphor of the pins becomes the chaos of the world.
The artists' artwork becomes deconstructive, what one may think
of when they think of bowling alley changes when this work is
viewed. The digital sensor helps to create the feeling of this
being deconstructive because the images are always changing.
The site was linking three public sites through ISDN lines and
a digital sensor. Every time someone bowled it triggered changes
in the chain of ISDN connections and scrambled the galleries laserdisc
projection. This interfered with the viewers path through the
website.
Because the images are always changing this helps to create a
nonlinear Web site. The site is also nonlinear in the way in
which information is given to the viewer. The text never just
is there, one has to wait for it to appear in a nonlinear format.
Information is gained in the order in which the viewer visits
the sites. The artists have not dictated how the information
will be received. They have created a worldview in which forms
of knowledge, shapes, and of time change.
The artists have used the relativist worldview of breaking down
the old view of time and space. They have created an artwork
that uses the integral worldview, one in which is complex, non-linear
and unpredictable. This was accomplished by using three sites
and the digital sensor. With the use of being able to participate
by writing in text on the Web site the artist also have used the
modernist "clockwork" worldview. The text on the site
and the text of the participant has become a validated vehicle
of communication.
This site reflects a post-humanism quality in that it is continually
recreating itself via the technology it is using. The subject
matter is always in progress and changes because of how the technology
reacts to its three sites. This also creates representations
of reality in technology by using the sensor. The images that
were created by hand and put onto the site are representations
as is the images created by the sensor. Our beliefs and understanding
about the image and reality of a bowling alley have to become
indifferent to our old-world thoughts after viewing this site.