_README

Some of My Favourite Web Sites Are Art
http://www.alberta.com/unfamiliarart/

Project #2:

_README
Heath Bunting
http://www.irational.org/_readme.html

This project by well-known Internet artist Heath Bunting foregrounds one
of the central characteristics of the Web in general and Web art in
particular: the link. A link is when you click on an image, work, or
icon that has been programmed in html to launch another page, window, or
technology. Web sites rely on the link, on the association created by
the yoking together of two disparate objects. Literally then, a web site
can have no boundaries, its tentacles reaching out into the web,
avoiding all structural limits. Very much unlike painting or sculpture,
Internet art extends outside the artist's work into other
projects–projects unrelated.

The text of "_readme" is from a news article written on Heath Bunting,
his person, his family, his work. Almost every word links to its
semantically-same corporate domain, if.com you.com see.com what.com
i.com mean.com. In this format the article, "Own, Be Owned or Remain
Invisible," activates Bunting's ideological position. The text actively
satirizes, engages, and resists the commercialization of Bunting and his
web site.

Besides the more obvious opposition between the individual and the
corporate, "Own, Be Owned or Remain Invisible" is also about what it
means to have a position of power as an artist, or what it means to be a
public figure. Bunting, who doesn't identify himself as an artist, takes
an article about himself and maps it onto Net space–blurring the
somewhat dubious lines that demarcate public and private individuality.
Do as the page's html title (_readme.html) says: read it, read him, read
in html.