HOTLIST - Brief Article

ArtForum, Nov, 2000 by Miltos Manetas

ARTFORUM IS SUCH AN UN-NEEN MAGAZINE. (If you don't know what that means, go to www.neen.org immediately.) A structure as clean as the proverbial brightly lit cube and heavy on heavy-duty content, the magazine's as big, classic, and white as the Acropolis. So recommending web-sites to Artforum readers makes me feel like I'm serving fast food in a church. And because the Web is nothing but info," I'm offering up info on info--which seems about as fitting for Artforum as a piece on New British Art for Cosmo. But I may be wrong, so here are some WWW musts, places that aren't art or even arty but "alive" in a way only computer civilization can simulate--in short, places that are totally neen.

The HyperArchive of the Info-Mac Archive hyperarchive.Ics.mit.edu

Every day, new programs for Mac are posted to this page. You're free to download them or just read the abstracts, which, in my opinion, are a new genre of literature. The HyperArchive will remind you how happy and enlightened we all felt going to contemporary art institutions and galleries in the old century. Visit the site often enough, and you may find something that's in short supply in the those venues today: new ideas.

Emulation

www.emulation.net

Discover the beauty of an operating system that's operating as the guest of another operating system. Observe your Mac or PC travestying a Palm Pilot or an old Atari. Forget the games and applications, just watch your computer's unnaturally intriguing behavior. Philosophically speaking, emulation is the modus operandi of our time.

Active Worlds

www.activeworlds.com

Wander around using an avatar body in a pseudo- 3-D world teeming with visitors and "buildings." Build a home somewhere or buy an entire world for anywhere between $10 and $1,150 a year. A naive realization of Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson's 1993 cyberpunk novel, Active Worlds is probably the best reason to buy a PC. Of course, you're free to avoid this suggestion and save a lot of time. You can always go to a P.S. 1 opening instead, where you'll no doubt espy (for free) plenty of human avatars looping their limited repertoire of responses.

Napster

www.napster.com

"Information wants to stay free." If you don't know about Napster, please stop reading.

Sodaconstructor

www.sodaplay.com

This self-described "online toy where you can build and play with things made out of masses, springs, and muscles" is all that and more. It's a Picasso-quality, absolutely neen SS (screen sculpture). Go to www.uncontrol.com and check out No. 6 for a similar treat.

Who Made What (and When!)

www.whomadewhat.com

Who used dust for an artwork? And what about horses, a hamburger, a basketball? On this website, not only can you find out who made what and when, but you can e-mail your own factoids and they'll automatically become part of the site's database.

MetaSpy

www.metaspy.com

Take a look inside the public mind. This page automatically refreshes every fifteen seconds, bringing you an unfiltered look at the search queries of MetaCrawler users.

UnDo

www.undo.net

It's amazing how successful this site has been at presenting challenging new Italian art for the last four years. Its design is as inventive, simple, and beautiful as Italian furniture.

Shift

www.shift.jp.org

The best Web-design magazine. Check out its links and forget about sleep for a week.

Miltos Manotas is an artist living in Los Angeles.