Days I've Been Alive

A website called Days I've Been Alive was one of the weirdest art project sites I have visited. The site was created by Ron Lent. The site is simple. It consists of rows of white dots on top of a gray background. Each dot represents a day that Lent has been alive. It also provides you with the total number of dots. When i visited the site today that number was 15465.

At first I thought that idea was interesting, but the execution was extremely boring. The website is not visually intriguing and there is no information provided besides the dots, the date, and the name of the site. Then, i began to think about why Lent was counting his days. Is he just appreciating each day? Does he have an illness or something that is limiting how long he has left? I think that he decided not to include any extra information so that the viewers of his site could decide for themselves why someone would want to count the days and maybe even appreciate their own days. 

ars astronautica

ars astronautica is a website that was launched in December 2008 by Arthur Woods. The site is focused on space art. It includes exhibitions, space art projects, image and video galleries, a website gallery and a blog. Woods uses the site to document his own activities as well as developments in the field of space art. He says, 

"Our current civilization has reached the carrying capacity of the planet and will soon need to turn to extraterrestrial resources to meet the human needs on Earth. Space artists will have a major role to play as this development unfolds."

This website was different than anything I have ever seen. I had never even heard of space art until I stumbled across this. The projects were really unique as well. One of the project was called O.U.R.S. This project created a ring satellite to orbit in order to create a "circle in the sky." It was meant to celebrate the advent of the new millennium. This among many other interesting space art projects are described on this site.

DIWO

Do It With Others (DIWO) is a project that lets artists make art on the web. It started in 2007 as Do-It-Yourself early net art that used the internet as a medium for producing work. Now DIWO is a collaborative online social space that enables communication and appreciation for contemporary work. People can sign up and contribute digital images, audio, and text to an HTTP gallery through an email list. 

After visiting the DIWO website, I understood the concept of the project more. A lot of art websites only accept certain pieces or charge you to display your art. This project lets you show your work through the email chain and the gallery. It lets more people display their pieces in the actual gallery than most sites. I also liked how its open for communication and collaboration. This project started in 2007 and will probably continue to successfully run for a while.