This Click in Time
Jonas Lund's new work "This Click in Time" is an internet art piece whose aesthetics relies on and is created by the viewer.
We have many quantitative metrics for understanding viewership online. “Likes,” “Shares,” unique viewers, time spent on a site, and more. These metrics are useful in many ways, but still lacking — they are calculated and cold, reducing the idea of viewership to pure data.
One aspect I love about museum going is the communal experience. I usually go with a friend, and often have a conversation with a security guard, or see someone having an unexpected reaction to a work. These are experiences in viewership that have not translated entirely or as well to the online sphere.
Jonas Lund‘s work “This Click in Time” isn’t an answer to those problems, but it opens up new potentialities for viewership online. The site records viewer’s clicks on the screen and plays them back in a loop. The more clicks in a given area, the whiter that area becomes, marking where each user decided to click.
Watching this work we slowly see an ephemeral cloud emerge from the black screen, it is beautiful to watch unfold. The piece’s beauty derives from and relies on the aesthetic of the cloud and crowd.
