LECTURE FIVE

Jason Nelson was our guest lecturer today and he discussed Net Art and digital creativity (among other things). I'd never known about net art until today and although it's not really my thing, I was fasinated by the complexity and orignality of his artwork.

I was immediately drawn to his work Pandemic Rooms. It gave me an eerie feeling. There is something spooky about it. It reminded me of the movie The Crow. I liked it even more when he told us the picture he used was from an old school hall in Kansas. On ebay they are selling these old schools and hospitals from places that were once overrun with people but are now almost ghost towns. This thought alone is unsettling but coupled with the bird shapes and the descprition of what the art is portraying ('our obsessions with microscopic species killers'), it makes the whole work quite disturbing.

Jason said that technology gives those without talent the ability to make artwork. He said he can't draw or paint but he can still make art through technology. What about those of us who can't pain, draw or make Net Art? Is there any hope for us?

A part of the lecture that I found particularly interesting as a journalism student was his thoughts on online publishing. Writing news for the internet is more specialised than writing for your local newspaper - you need to find different angles and have a different news values. For example, if I was writing for the Gold Coast Bulletin, a huge news value would be locality and proximity, however, if I'm writing a story that is to be publised for people nation and sometimes worldwide, this would not be so significant. Therefore I would need to find some other selling point for my story; another angle and news value to capture and retain peoples attention.