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The 12hr-ISBN-JPEG Project

391.org is an on-line magazine styled on dada principles first published in the year 2000. 391 owes its origins to the physical periodical 391 "first published by the poet/artist Francis Picabia in 1917 and was a bridge between the Zurich Dadaists, French Surrealists, Marcel Duchamp and others" ("391:information"). 391.org, collaborators and contributors are able, unlike their earlier predecessors, to connect through new media technologies and explore current and archived works through the online platform.

Dada was an international art and anti-art revolution that included both visual and performing artists. The movement took rook in the Cabaret Voltaire, Switzerland in 1916 where young people sought for independence and protested against World War I and "the tools of western enlightenment - rationality and the belief in technological progress" (Joseph). Dada seemed as "an artistic revolt against art" where for example, in 1917, Marcel Duchamp "[put] a moustache and beard in black crayon on a colored reproduction of Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa" ("Dada"), creating a shock that public viewers did not appreciate.

Although Dada had no formal aesthetic, Hans Richter, one of the early Dadaist at the turn of the century described it as consisting of the following elements: simultaneous poetry, manifestos, abstract painting, collage/photomontage, chance, carbaret/exhibitions, use of the audience, and collaboration (Richter). In this instance, the artists of 391.org find that through the delivery of new media programming, interactivity, kineticism, and dimensionality, they too are able to use the internet to explore the expression of of Dada some eighty years later. They termed the extension of Dada into new media as MADA (MultimediA-DAda). In the article "Looking for Art in all the Wrong Places", the author Jon Ippolito suggests that with the current overlap of technology into the field of creativity, we are experiencing "a seismic instability along the edge between art and non-art". Perhaps these ruptures further paralleled the relationship of Dadaism to the Internet both belonging to art and anti art at the same time, both being misunderstood in their day.

The Dada movement may parallel the net's structure but the related movements too , like Constructivism, Surrealism, and Futurism, also meet with MADA's mandates and ideologies.

In the piece "Access Points", the concept artist and editor, "Hooshla Fox" of 391.org, sees that "in the digital age production is cheap and easy. The bottleneck is not so much in recording an album or printing a book, as it is getting your album or book 'out there'" (Babel). The opportunity to work together with little overhead led Hooshla, Babel - contributor and collaborator of 391.org- and other artists to contribute to the proposed work. The price of assemble of different artworks, as noted in the title of the work, also represent of different notions of "access points" in society and those that control these access points of information. An access point, as noted by Babel, is the telephone company that controls a city's communication of a city and can be described to its operation:

On September 11th, the phone companies limited the number of circuits available that people could use to contact people in New York so that emergency workers would have reliable communication. In that situation, the action was justified, but it demonstrates the unbelievable power of the person who flipped the switch to cut one of the world's biggest cities off from the outside world. (Babel)

This idea of representing critical access points via the net artwork "Access Points", by draws the viewers' attention to each point of and also mirrors the concepts and ideologies of both Dada and MADA.

When an audience arrives at this net art piece, a map is placed at the viewer's disposal, allowing the viewer to locate himself/herself in the city through the function of links on the map. The map itself possesses an amateur aesthetic, like images created in MS Paint. The map is enhanced with pop-up logos and signs which appear when the cursor is passed on top of the buildings on the map. Different links link to different critical points of access composed by images, texts, and sounds, some leading to a dead end, some sending the viewer through a loop. All critical access points are reliant on user interactivity. The viewer can reach three other alternative maps each appearing similar to the first map, however the latter consists of more links and other access points, which further define the true need to fully comprehend one's space.

 
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Site: http://www.391.org/