Adversarial collaborations
Any collaboration is a negotiation. While most artistic teams hide the dissent and shifting alliances that lie behind their decisions, these works hosted at three.org in the early days of the Web stress individual differences rather than a unified front.
The following works have from three.org have been resurrected and can be viewed in a modern browser, but they are displayed in the space at right to simulate the typical screen resolution of the period. Most works are by Janet Cohen, Keith Frank, and Jon Ippolito, with occasional contributions by Joline Blais and Alex Galloway.
For more context, see an interview with Cohen, Frank, and Ippolito by Steve Dietz of the Walker Art Center.
Sentences on Adversarial Collaborations
Cohen, Frank, and Ippolito (1994)
For this interactive artists' statement, Cohen, Frank, and Ippolito predetermined the beginning of each sentence but completed them independently. An interactive HTML interface enables readers to compare their answers. This work was featured in the online gallery Artline a year after the Web was invented. (The menu link has been disabled.)
State of the Art
Cohen, Frank, and Ippolito (1995)
Tired of interviews between artists and curators rehashing the same rhetorical strategies, Cohen, Frank, and Ippolito decided to annotate a composite conversation and compile the associated strategies in a chart. (The menu link has been disabled.)
The Unreliable Archivist
Cohen, Frank, and Ippolito (1998, re-created 2010)
Commissioned by the Walker Art Gallery on the occasion of the archiving of the renowned art website ada·web, the Unreliable Archivist is a Web page assembled from components drawn from different äda'web projects. Four sliders that run the gamet from plain to preposterous allow users to recombine this archetypal äda·web page to suite their preferences. "As unreliable archivists, Cohen, Frank, and Ippolito question what it means to archive or 'fix' such a dynamic medium"—Steve Dietz.
Variorum of Past Projects
Cohen, Frank, and Ippolito (1998)
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Frustrated at studio visits driven by the agenda of the viewer, Cohen, Frank, and Ippolito created an interactive portal to documentation of their analog collaborations. The rhetoric describing each work changes depending on the icon chosen by the reader, from formal to theoretical to sensationalist to biographical.
Fair e-Tales: Cinderella
Joline Blais, Frank, and Ippolito (2000, re-created 2005)
Rather than focus on the princess like a typical Disney fantasy, Fair e-Tales tries to give equal weight to each protagonist in a series of traditional fables. While the traditional telling of Cinderella focuses on an alliance between Cinderella and the Prince, this interactive interface lets users create alliances among any pair of agents in the story, including the Mother and Stepsisters.
Fair e-Tales: Little Red Riding Hood
Joline Blais, Frank, and Ippolito (2000, re-created 2005)
This version of the classic folk tale lets the reader choose the Person from whose perspective the story is told, from the usual detached third-person to the perspective of a judgmental parent to the young girl's own view of herself.
Tag
Alex Galloway, Frank, and Ippolito (2003)
Tag attaches to incoming e-mail a header that evaluates the text according to predefined criteria such as the amount of jargon, hipness, or ponderousness inherent in the message. It was first deployed in the Distributed Creativity forum created by Joline Blais and Eyebeam to combine messages from the Creative Commons, DATA, Fibreculture, Rhizome, and Sarai.net email lists.