Proposal: One Percent of the Total Cost for Development of New Websites Shall be Devoted to Net Art
Filed under: archived, netart, publicspace, webdesign
Originally published on 25 March 2012 at the Konst & Teknik blog.
The city of Stockholm is currently building a huge new hospital, estimated to be finished in the year 2016. It’s one of the biggest constructions in the city at the moment, and will result in a ~13 million Euro (118.000.000 SEK) art acquisition and commission before 2017, thanks to a rule introduced in 1965;
“One percent of the total cost for constructions, conversions and extensions shall be devoted to artistic decoration.”
— About the one percent rule
We strongly believe that public space these days extends beyond the physical. As people socialize, hang out, shop, and play both online and offline, many websites too should be considered public spaces. And with many artists working with the Internet as their only medium, why not translate the idea of public art from the physical space to the web?
Konst & Teknik would like to propose that 1% of development costs of new websites shall be devoted to the acquisition or commission of Internet art works, to be installed on those very websites, so that ‘all the people of Stockholm, regardless of who they are or how they live, should have the opportunity to experience art in their immediate environment.’
A few mockup proposals
Rafael Rozendaahls “Aesthetic Echo” in the background of the Karolinska Institutet front page.
Olia Lialinas self-portrait gif animations on the 404 (not found) pages of the city of Stockholm.
Oliver Larics “50 50” placed in the footer of the Swedish Arts Council website.
In opposite to physical art, Internet based art works usually don’t exist in a fixed place; they get copied, shared and re-distributed, most times without any control of the artist. This is part of what makes Internet art unique, and we would never want to propose something that changes that idea. This proposal is not about a work being showed exclusively on these websites, but rather about them being showed there too.