Speed Frenzy – A fast Trip to Slow Suicide
A slow drive to suicide, slow for a fast trip. Every fast food eaten a million times. Every song heard, Every image seen. Nowhere to enter, no body to hide… No words to read, no poems to sing. It is a slow drive to suicide. The truth can no longer keep up with the speed of the image. In many whirlpools of different realities- real shudders, collapses and disintegrations: part cybernetics, part designer, part residue, part outdated stack of polished reality. Today, things have accelerated into inertia. Fast economy, but slow business. Fast images, slow eyes. Fast money, slow morals. Fast sex but slow desire. Fast globalization, slow regionalization. Fast media, but slow communication.
The fatal fate of the law of entropy, from which we can neither escape nor overcome, in the slow mirror of speed… faster techniques, slower thinking speed, more accelerated culture, slower rate of social change…
Arthur and Murilouise Kroker – Speed Delirium(1)
Today, computer-related new technologies and the application of new techniques in art—referred to as new media, internet, and digital art—have brought along new debates. Following the direct relationship established between video art and the postmodern period, the scope and limits of new media, especially internet and digital art, remain ambiguous both for contemporary artists and art theorists. In terms of its prevalence, the very short history of the internet explains why the boundaries of internet art have only just started to be conceptualized.
Computer animation, music, interactive art, CD-ROMs, internet applications, web literature, and similar areas of application—technologies that have evolved into mediums—highlight a post-Postmodern convergence of science and art or perhaps a new modernity. Although internet and digital art may seem like mere tools in artistic practice, they also require technical infrastructure, coding knowledge, creativity, and design skills. For the first time since the Modern period, we are witnessing such a close integration of science and art. According to Kroker (2), “the era we live in is not a medieval one, but rather a hypermodern digital renaissance. After the long slumber of modernism, the codified design of dreaming awakens; creativity and imagination open their eyes and attempt to reconstruct the digital world.”
Considering the widespread use and rapid diffusion of computers today, it is clear that computer-centered communication is the dominant form of mass communication in our time. Despite the brief history of computers and the internet, the main reason for their dominance lies in their ability to integrate other media like radio, television, and the telephone. Given how central these technologies are to everyday life, it is only natural that they find a place in art—not only as media or tools but also as conceptual foundations for artistic expression.
Although visual output from computer technologies is still limited to 2D screens today, visual reality modeling technologies now make it possible to talk about immersive, 3D representations close to reality (think: The Matrix). Just as Baudrillard (3) claimed that “TV does not transmit images but imposes new relational and perceptual modes that transform family and community structures,” the near future may confront us with simulation technologies that blur or surpass reality itself. The potential consequences of such messages call for broader analysis. Art readings on this subject often foresee a Nietzschean nihilism. The Speed Delirium web-text quoted at the beginning by Kroker supports this prediction. With an atmosphere of deep pessimism, every transformation of our time is described in terms of its destructive duality.
Considering the widespread use and rapid diffusion of computers today, it is clear that computer-centered communication is the dominant form of mass communication in our time. Despite the brief history of computers and the internet, the main reason for their dominance lies in their ability to integrate other media like radio, television, and the telephone. Given how central these technologies are to everyday life, it is only natural that they find a place in art—not only as media or tools but also as conceptual foundations for artistic expression.
At this point, a project worthy of attention and offering a different perspective within internet art is Radar Web, designed by Shu Lea Cheang, Sawad Brooks, and Beth Stryker.
Radar Web was created as an interface with the “Elephant Cage Butterfly Locker” (ECBL). This site, operating between Okinawa, Tokyo, and the Internet, was designed to form a moving “Radar Web” to reconstruct traces of memories. Approximately 19.5% of Okinawa has been leased by the Japanese government to the U.S. military for compulsory base use. This semi-tropical resort area is filled with species of butterflies unique to the region. The people of Okinawa believe that butterflies guide the souls of the dead to heaven. In the project, butterflies are used as symbolic memory-data copies.
When you open the website (Image 1), on the black background, information about the site and Okinawa appears on the left, while on the right, a global diagram of butterflies and vector lines is displayed. The only moving elements are three clock-like circular objects rotating clockwise (Image 2), each of which opens to three separate links.
Link 1: Crime and Memory
In the left section (Image 3), information about the Okinawa project is provided. Since Okinawa’s reversion to Japan in 1972, over 4,700 crimes and accidents related to the establishment of the U.S. military base have been reported. Thirty of these were compiled by Kaori Sunagawa. Using the Elephant Cage as an echo chamber, moving vectors (poles) were designed to function as indicators or reflectors of crimes—essentially creating a memory-copy and a record of colonization.
On the right side, four radar movement diagrams with neon green dates appear. When you click a date, the crime or event corresponding to that date becomes visible on the left.
Examples:
1988, Okinawa City – A 26-year-old woman with a mild mental disability was abducted by U.S. military personnel, taken to a U.S. base, and repeatedly raped over several days.
March 18, 1996, Onna Settlement – 120 tons of oil sludge containing eleven types of toxic chemicals were found in the Onna Communications Facility.
May–June – A jet dumped leftover fuel containing 36,400 ppm of biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) into the Tengan River.
Link 2: Archive of Memory and Movement. The second link (Image 4) shows the June 22, 1996 live internet archive from the Elephant Cage in Yomitan, Okinawa, between 4–7 PM (local time). Moving poles and 1,000 memory vectors are visualized. On the black background, colorful butterfly wing images appear in small boxes on the left. Clicking on any of them reveals theme-related images on the homepage design (Image 6).
Link 3: Simulated History Navigation (image 7): A circular radar sweep with a moving light beam navigates through dates written in blue. As the light beam approaches a date, it becomes highlighted; dates outside the beam’s focus fade away. When a vector connected to a specific date is clicked, a document about that event appears on the right panel.
Examples:
April 23, 1971 – A 23-year-old woman in Ginowan was killed with a rock by a U.S. service member. The suspect was arrested by the U.S. Army but acquitted due to lack of evidence
August 6, 1948 – An ammunition explosion occurred as bombs were loaded onto the “Kabira New Peer” cargo ship, killing 106 and injuring 76 passengers.
October 20, 1951 – A U.S. Air Force fuel tank crashed onto a private house in Makishi, killing six people.
Radar Web Project was designed by Shu Lea Cheang, Sawad Brooks and Beth Stryker as a site that moves between Okinawa-Tokyo and the Internet ECBL. As a break in the history of the region, it is an incriminating record of the crimes and accidents committed by the Americans during the period when it was used as an American Base. In other words, design is like a serious questioning and accusation against imperialism and war, as well as an effort to create a memory against the concept of speed and rapidly changing agendas of our time. This is an inquiry into the criticisms made about the memorylessness of media techniques and products, which most art theorists of today agree on, by creating a new memory with the use of new technologies such as the internet. It works in the logic of a memory machine that sheds light on a period of a region from today.
Since the local people living in the region believe that butterflies guide souls to go to heaven, butterflies are symbolized as memory-information copies in the project; The contrast between the imaginary and mythological beliefs of the local people and a technology (radar) designed for war purposes helps to present the project as a silent, dignified and intellectual protest, saving it from dry ideological criticism. Kelebek is on the side of the local people. From another perspective, butterflies must have memories since they can guide souls to heaven. The same memory may well record and document the crimes committed, just like in the project. (The designers of the project must have thought so)..Radar-Web is a successful arrangement and an effective project that derives its aura from history, collective belief (butterflies), and being right.
However, another crucial point that must be addressed is the low likelihood of an internet-based art project like Radar Web reaching a broad audience amidst millions of other channels online. For viewers to experience such a site, they must intentionally seek it out and visit the specific address. This situation exemplifies one of the limitations and challenges of internet art in general.
An online symposium held in parallel with the ‘Bitstreams’ exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art in March 2001 and the ‘010101: Art in Technological Times’ exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art shed light on these issues. This symposium initiated significant inquiries into whether internet art could be considered a legitimate form of art; the problems of digital presentation; the social and political consequences of digital and internet-based projects; difficulties related to exhibiting such works in galleries; and the challenges of archiving them.
In the symposium, digital art was defined as an interesting model that deviates from the dominant Pop-Minimalist axis of American art and from the Conceptual/Documentary model popular in northern Europe. It was also noted that while digital and internet art are often grouped together, they are not identical.
As Lawrence Rinder aptly put it, “All internet art is digital, but not all digital art is internet art.” Based on this distinction, if internet art and digital art are truly sui generis (unique in kind), then these fields must develop their own institutions and discourses. If these are indeed forms of art, then they should be positioned within the broader context of art history and other artistic practices. (4)
Artist and theorist Wolfgang Staehle highlighted an important contradiction: traditional museums are spaces governed by authority, classification, and contextual validation—yet the internet, with its vast networks, freely distributed content, and often chaotic creativity, functions in exactly the opposite way. Therefore, curators will increasingly face dilemmas and contradictions in engaging with internet-based works. (5)
One of the most important aspects of internet art is the autonomy it offers to artists. It allows them to create and present their work outside the hierarchical systems of the art world—independent from galleries, museums, and institutional gatekeepers. This freedom is essential to the nature of art and creativity. Because internet art lacks material form, it is free from commercial concerns. It is unmediated and direct. Its ephemerality also protects the artist from the burden of historical permanence.
In this respect, internet art seems to provide the vital condition for the existence of art: freedom.
Since the 1990s, this independence—enabled by direct, unfiltered communication—has been one of the key reasons why many artists have turned to internet art.