Feed (detail), Mark Napier, 2001
Feed is a system created by Mark Napier that "unravels the web". It reads the information - HTML and images - of a specific URL and reduces them into a stream of text and images. The feed is fed to nine displays that chart, graph and plot the data. Similar to many of Napier's other online projects, including The Shredder, Feed is designed to create an aesthetic visual experience that is based on a purely random computation of raw data.
Napier's work addresses the issues of "authorship" and "ownership" that are intrinsically redefined when art is created through a digital medium. In projects like Feed that incorporate an essential degree of interaction from viewers in order to operate (inputing a URL), the question is raised over who has claim to the visual product - Is the engineer who designed the code that randomizes the image the artist? Is the visitor who defines the URL to that is "fed" the constructor of the image? Is the person who created the webpage that is being randomized the author?
Can there be an author at all of media on the web? Feed highlights the fact that everything online is composed of data - of binary codes that are meaningless unless they are read by a computer. Despite the fact that individuals may organize these codes into a variety of images and text, each pixel can be reduced down to a single number. Can anyone really claim property over a series of 1s and 0s? If so - to what extent? How much information must be involved for a piece of data to be considered unique?
The issue of randomization in producing computer-based graphical images also highlights the problem of claiming authorship. In design programs such as Photoshop and Illustrator, many of the tools that can be utilized function according to a computer-based randomization system. If artists utilize these tools in the creation of images, can the products they produce really be considered an expression of their own design or are they credited only to the computer's inner operating system. Again, there also is the question of the extent to which this applied, and when can we say a work is ours and when is it just a random orientation of pixels created by a program?
This issues of authorship are relevant to me as a producer of online media and as a victim of creative theft of online media. The extent to which someone who produces a digital graphic - or even creates a unique HTML code - can lay legal claim over their work still seems to lie in a gray zone.
Napier's work addresses the issues of "authorship" and "ownership" that are intrinsically redefined when art is created through a digital medium. In projects like Feed that incorporate an essential degree of interaction from viewers in order to operate (inputing a URL), the question is raised over who has claim to the visual product - Is the engineer who designed the code that randomizes the image the artist? Is the visitor who defines the URL to that is "fed" the constructor of the image? Is the person who created the webpage that is being randomized the author?
Can there be an author at all of media on the web? Feed highlights the fact that everything online is composed of data - of binary codes that are meaningless unless they are read by a computer. Despite the fact that individuals may organize these codes into a variety of images and text, each pixel can be reduced down to a single number. Can anyone really claim property over a series of 1s and 0s? If so - to what extent? How much information must be involved for a piece of data to be considered unique?
The issue of randomization in producing computer-based graphical images also highlights the problem of claiming authorship. In design programs such as Photoshop and Illustrator, many of the tools that can be utilized function according to a computer-based randomization system. If artists utilize these tools in the creation of images, can the products they produce really be considered an expression of their own design or are they credited only to the computer's inner operating system. Again, there also is the question of the extent to which this applied, and when can we say a work is ours and when is it just a random orientation of pixels created by a program?
This issues of authorship are relevant to me as a producer of online media and as a victim of creative theft of online media. The extent to which someone who produces a digital graphic - or even creates a unique HTML code - can lay legal claim over their work still seems to lie in a gray zone.
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