Net Art Research, pt I: the389.com
The first site I’m going to bring to your attention as part of the Advanced Software Applications research is the389.com. I was linked to this site by someone on Twitter, but I’m not sure who now- whoever it was, thanks! The man behind it appears to be named Andrey Yazev, but that’s about all I can find, background wise.
The site hosts a variety of web art pieces and experiments. A lot of them use interface elements in imaginative ways; some are bonkers physics based toys, while some shred your preconceptions of how a website should operate. I particularly like this wee sequencer which lets you create music on the fly.
This isn’t so remarkable, you might think- tools like Flash and Processing let you do this kind of thing relatively easily, but the fact that this website has been built without using plugins or extensions at all is pretty remarkable, although as HTML5 grows we’ll no doubt see further potential unlocked. This site does what web developers have been doing for a long time: uses web technologies in new and unexpected ways. It also has a certain nostalgic feel to it- a lot of the interface elements used have a distinctly Web 1.0 look to them, but there is clearly using some scary coding behind the scenes to create the somewhat “retro” aesthetic.