title: webzen
year: 2009
webpage on server
launch artwork: http://katastrofsky.cont3xt.net/webzen
A Koan: “All things can be traced back to the One, to what, however, can the One be traced back?” - “Untitled Document” is written on top of the browser window. No name, no content, no design: a webpage as simple as it can be. Still the work webzen (2009) demands outmost concentration. Clicking from one page to the next, the neverending quest for links is leading further, the skimming through pieces of information and the scanning of texts and pictures is interrupted - which is irritating. webzen is an attempt to abandon representational thinking, to understand life as utterly art of absent-mindedness and to experience the reality beyond duality and logic and beyond space and time. webzen has only one assignment: the single-serving site wants to overcome itself by means of meditating on the basic formulas of sourcecode: <html>, <head>, <title>, <body>, system, spirit, concept, body. But overcoming would only have been possible if the site would have never existed.
- another Koan: “All things can be traced back to the code, to what, however, can the code be traced back?”
new work: webzen
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Type: discussion
Comments
"A web page as simple as it can be"
We could say that <html></html> is the simplest of web pages. However, we could also say that this (and yours) isn't even a web page because it doesn't pass w3c validation. (http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fkatastrofsky.cont3xt.net%2Fwebzen%2F&charset=%28detect+automatically%29&doctype=Inline&group=0)
Actually, I kind of like the idea of having to declare the character encoding in a document that contains nothing. It's like having to use a sack because you have nothing to carry … or having to decide whether spaces should be capitalized.
pallthay:"Actually, I kind of like the idea of having to declare the character encoding in a document that contains nothing. It's like having to use a sack because you have nothing to carry … or having to decide whether spaces should be capitalized."
… calls to mind the first and purest exist.pl … where the GNU public license was almost all of the code … a discursive pivot in the real so as to step beyond it … or closer to it … which may be the same thing …
A discursive pivot in the expected so as to step beyond it, I should have said. Koans don't step outside of the real, just the expected real.
Yes, I feel very much in my "realm" here. Speaking of which:
http://pallit.lhi.is/microcodes/index.php?code_id=11
ha! this is great, thanks a lot. i guess you provided an answer to the last Koan:
Q: “All things can be traced back to the code, to what, however, can the code be traced back?”
A: "You have to use a sack because you have nothing to carry."
but maybe this is a misconception of what a Koan is ;-)
AND what is quite interesting is the question when is a webpage a webpage (in a philosophical manner)? technically one could say it has to pass the validation but if it is just written on a piece of paper is it still a webpage?
Q: “All things can be traced back to the code, to what, however, can the code be traced back?”
A: "You have to use a sack because you have nothing to carry."
I like that. :)
…
More thoughts on koans and pointing … Bodhidharma: "Scriptures are the finger that points to the moon of Enlightenment." … Zen koans and art don't seem to be themselves expressions of nothingness, but rather something that stimulates aporia (and an individual quest for wisdom), no? Every koan points outside of itself, yet this piece is a self-contained dead end midgadflight.
You're onto something with the "irritating" aspect of the piece. But I wonder if it's not irritating enough, if that makes sense. ;-)
Vijay