Unauthorized Art Projects

I think that most great art contains an element of the subversive. Reading the biographies of great classical and contemporary artists, one certainly gets the renegade feel in many cases: Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Hieronymus Bosch, van Gogh, Edgar Degas, Joan Miro, Pablo Picasso, Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, Man Ray, Louise Nevelson, Jackson Pollock, Georgia O'Keefe, Andy Warhol; the list goes on and on.

Aside from the usual concept of "Fine Art", much great software started out as a "hack", to wit: Unix at BellLabs, AppleComputer's offerings and, of course, MicroSoft's infamous collection.

Some of mine:

http://members.aol.com/smeetfrog <- an enduring local UrbanLegend.
http://members.aol.com/spacek2 <- we just did this for a while.

My Friends:

http://members.aol.com/puppetorium <- incredible puppets by Naia Venturi.
http://www.potterbelmar.org <- art projects by Leslie Raymond and Jason Stevens

Perhaps you'd like to add your thoughts about UnauthorizedSoftwareProjects?.

-- KirkKitchen

List of Famous "Art" Hacks

http://www.heidelberg.org/
--add to this list.

List of Your Own "Art" Hacks

--invitation to type...

Doesn't this concept denigrate the public as unable to notice the in-joke nature of the so-called art? I rarely gain enlightenment from things that I believe are intended to fool and/or belittle me. This attitude permeates the poseur class of the art world, and to some extent the academic (PostModernism, mainly) --PeteHardie

Thank's for your opinion. All I can say in response is that the work has delighted many people who aren't in on the in-joke, whatever that may be. The fragments you can see through these web links are an IncompletePicture? of the work. I'm sorry you believe that people are trying to fool you and belittle you, but thanks for at least spending the time to peruse the links. Good luck in your SearchForEnlightenment?. --KirkKitchen.

I'm not sure you got my point. I'm not saying that people don't find it funny, I'm saying that it's akin to putting a banana peel on the sidewalk - those watching may get a laugh from the victims' falling, but the victim is less-than-amused, and the attitude of the perpetrator is less-than-noble. --PeteHardie

Hmmm. Some of these are indeed that way, the one in particular is the SmeetFrog legend. But the whole city is in on it -- even our fair mayor. I've gotten so I believe in it. Swear I do! Yah we do get a kick out of others who fall for it like the JackeLope? myth of Nebraska, or the AtomicCat? of internet fame. You're right about that one in particular. However a lot of the rest of the stuff is just plain interactive fun for the general public. Don't judge the entire book by one page you find unreadable! And there are many authors in the fray, akin to the WikiWiki world I'm a poseur as you say. Always have been and always will. No apologies there. But I don't pretend to be anything else. So I think I get your point and I am sorry if you feel like the shlamozzle. I'd buy you a cup of coffee if we met, and give you a ride in my SillyCar? down to the river where the SmeetFrog chirps relentless all Winter if you wouldn't find my company too treacherously painful. ;=) --KirkKitchen

btw, I'm an expert in PrePostPostNeoClassicalHegelianDialecticalModernisticHermaneuticShamanicDruidicTotemicAboriginalism?. It's so obscure that it will probably be a hundred thousand years before it gets to the universities. I'd write a book about it but it requires a meta-meta-meta-meta-meta-meta-meta-meta-meta-meta-meta-meta language to describe it's paradigms. Such an heavily abstracted concept can be represented in a Quark-sized thought kernel. DouglasAdams didn't write this.