I am a fan of online art experiments, as you know, especially ones that don’t take themselves too seriously.
I’m excited about this one because it comes out of Philadelphia and it’s pretty darn good. The Vacuum, which launched yesterday, is a collaborative venture started by Samuel Yun and Matthew Sepielli, two young Philadelphia artists. The interface is a little oblique and yet after noodling around for maybe five minutes in the architectural, 3-floor framework I figured out how to access the works on each floor.
Click on the <-MB-> space designators on each floor and you’re in. (top image is Andrew Jewell‘s “Morning with audio track,” in which the sun rises above the fakest looking mountains I’ve ever seen while saccharine music (bagpipes and a song about Ireland) goes on and on)
There are five people in the show: in addition to Yun and Sepielli, that’s Scott Moore, Andrew Jewell and Leonard Graye.
Happily, the works are short and some are quite amusing. My favorite was Graye‘s popup error message piece (image right) in which clicking quit or ok takes you into a lover’s quarrel in which you can’t win no matter what you click. Very very true to life somehow and very funny. Here’s the opening error message:
“System Error. The program has preformed a false operation. You don’t even love me anymore. Do you want to quit?”
Sepielli and Yun‘s “Moon 2” (image left) is an interactive piece that spins the abject-looking, meditating artist 360 degrees if you hold your mouse in the right place. Once I figured this out I let myself go wild spinning him right and left like a dervish. Playing “god” was quite fun for a few moments although I wouldn’t want the job full time.
Sepielli is The Vacuum’s director and his email says they’re looking for all types of art but especially new media works. Note: some of the information on the site seems out of date (like the deadline for submitting work for the next show…and the sign-ins at the front desk need a little fixing) but check out the work itself. It’s good.
