Surfing the Internet in public
"Guthrie presents selections from his beloved collection of World Wide Web awesomeness!"3/7/06
I wanted a night to celebrate the exciting side of the web: home pages, home video, and (especially) homemade creations. I gave a very loose lecture about web pages as folk art, projecting myself surfing the net in one of the back rooms of the art building here (un-officially, which was pretty easy to do.) I did a surfing marathon through a whole bunch of my favorite sites (which you can check out down below), trying to overwhelm everyone with a sense of the overall scope and scale of this great stuff. I think about 25-30 people came total, which was awesome. It was really fun, and I think people enjoyed it and hopefully got something out of it (even though I think it definitely came across as more giddy fun than intelligent criticism!)
I also made a messy (real) desktop installation outside the event, a sort of shrine covered in printed out pictures from files saved on my (computer) desktop. People took some of their favorites home (sorta like WWW baseball cards!) I also handed out CD-ROM party favors, stuffed full of tidbits I've been collecting from around the Internet, including an excessive amount of pictures of homemade cake decorations, 14 distinct MIDI versions of "Wipeout," a bunch of baby home movies, and other exciting stuff.
