art on the net is strange.. people lurking at screens, often alone and in bad lighting conditions. they probabily ate trashy food, and maybe they drank a beer or two. it's not like being at a museum: art like this is just another thing. in the perception of the user, anyway. it is relly interesting how at the beginning art on the network was really concerned on interface. you went to see the works and there tey were: html interfaces totally messed up, images popping out, annoying sounds, strange backgrounds, possibly built on animated gifs, and so on. or based on a research on an aesthetic such that the moment you looked at it you declared "he's from germany!" yes, you said "he" and "germany". and that's the way it was: it was bad-looking in a way, as a lot of stuff of the avantgarde, and it had thought behind it, it ws "meta"-something. we got to the industrial and information revolutions and after that nothing was the same anymore: someone had to explain you "art" before you could say "oh, it is beautiful!". no more nice asses on statues, or perfect color gradients made with 16 different brushes and 18 different minerals used to prepare the paint. but alchemy was still there. only it went farther from the eye, and closer to other senses. sound, for example. or that form of "new tactility" that you establish with websites, virtual environments, or by browsing the web in that hypnotic state in which you grab content, you look at it for 3 seconds, then you click and get another content and you start over with the new one, just until you switch off your pc. you get it, you feel it (who hasn't experienced such a rush while surfing? at least a few times?), it is a new sense, it is a new perspective in sensoriality. by it possibly didn't become organic enough so that you don't need explanations when you try to figure out what it is about. Alan's work is like that. On language. And, from what i can see, most contemporary art is like that, too. you need explanations, if you wish to understand. (and the persons explaining almost rise up to the same importance level as the author, if you think about it ... it isn't a time for ego anymore) or you just need to relax and feel the experience. or you can hit that "DEL" button on the keyboard, as this art is built for that, too.
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