Brad Troemel Archives

Art

Revisiting Tumblr as Art

by Ben Valentine February 22, 2013March 1, 2013

Editor’s note: This is the first in a series of commissioned essay for The World’s First Tumblr Art Symposium. This essay is a revised and expanded version of Ben Valentine’s “Tumblr as Art” that was first published on June 19, 2012.

Much has been written about the rise of internet art. Just in the last few years, we’ve seen net artworks such as “intotime.org” by Rafaël Rozendaal; Twitter art by the likes of An Xiao and others; “e.m-bed.de/d/,” an immersive online music video experience by Yung Jake; and “$,” a Google Docs piece by Man Bartlett. But there is a burgeoning field of both social and discrete, beautiful, and weird internet art that demands our attention: Tumblr art.

Art

Five Art Projects That Change the Way We Browse the Web

by Ben Valentine October 3, 2012January 2, 2013

BERKELEY, California — Whatever definition for art you hold dear, quality art often offers the viewer a chance to challenge that definition and a new means to look at the world. New perspectives are important: they disrupt our expectations, allowing for new ways of thinking, new dialogues, and new ideas. A particularly interesting genre of internet art offers the same possibility. Rather than the single URL-based work that links nowhere, works that embrace the internet’s networked structure allow us to engage and explore the internet in an entirely new way. These works give us new ways to browse.

Art

The Potential for Journalism in the Expanded Field

by Ben Valentine October 1, 2012October 3, 2012

BERKELEY, California — As more of us can afford the tools historically only available to publishing houses, we have increasingly adopted them to share our stories and thoughts online. The invention of the printing press in the mid-1400s cheapened and quickened the arduous process of writing texts by hand. The cheaper the publishing, the cheaper the books, making information more accessible and creating an economic environment where more people could become publishers, creating an increasingly diverse, cheap, and accessible flow of information to an increasingly wider audience. Before the printing press books were rare and expensive, few possessed them and few could read them. The internet has expanded what the printing press started at an unprecedented degree.

Opinion

Surfcave Destroys the Illusion of Online Privacy

by Kyle Chayka September 19, 2012September 19, 2012

What if every image that ever passed through your web browser was published for all to see? Surfcave is a new Chrome browser plugin and website by Jonathan Vingiano and Brad Troemel that turns surfing the internet into a relentlessly public, voyeuristic, and hypnotic activity.

Art

Tumblr as Art

by Ben Valentine June 19, 2012June 25, 2012

Much has been written about the rise of internet art. We’ve seen URL, Twitter and Google Docs works. But until recently I hadn’t encountered Tumblr art.

Opinion

Required Reading

by Hrag Vartanian January 23, 2011January 23, 2011

This edition of Required Reading has a heavy dose of California and some very critical texts.

Jon Jackson says goodbye to LA with billboards — Mike Kelley shows in LA after 8 years — Donald Kuspit tears apart John Baldessari — Paddy Johnson gives Brad Troemel the thumbs down — House Republicans hate federal arts funding

Art

Always Social: Getting Noticed (2008-2010), Part Two

by AX Mina June 16, 2010June 25, 2010

The most striking aspect of social media art is that it contains facets of net.art, by being digital; visual art, by existing on a two-dimensional surface; public art, by existing in spaces used habitually by hundreds of millions of people; and performance art, by being inherently social. Whether the aggregate is greater than its sum remains to be seen …

Art

Hyperallergic Is JSTChillin’ in San Francisco This Weekend

by Artie Vierkant April 16, 2010April 16, 2010

Three must-see shows this weekend in SF: Parker Koo Ito’s RGB Forever show at Adobe Books Backroom Gallery; the AVATAR 4D group show at NOMA Gallery; and Rich Bott’s STILL AT LARGE STOP LAST SEEN AT MIRA MESA CHILIS STOP at 2nd Floor Projects.

News

Join Our Social Media Art Roundtable on Facebook

by AX Mina April 13, 2010April 12, 2010

Just as social media have quickly gone mainstream, we’re starting to see social media art received more attention from the mainstream art world. I’m currently writing a survey of social media art’s (brief!) history for Hyperallergic and as part of my research, I’ve invited a number of contemporary social media artists to a roundtable discussion on Hyperallergic’s Facebook page.

Newsletters

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