Project
by Chad Rossouw
Sock and Awe: Bush-baiting and the potential of Internet art
The great thing about the Internet is its potential ability to respond to real-life situations immediately. It can reflect faster than print, and this is seen most readily in news, where stories can break, be published, analysed and disseminated within minutes. However, it can also be seen in other cultural artefacts. An example would be YouTube in which videos are posted and responded to in real time.
A humorous and unique aspect of this 'real time' response which borders on our understanding of art, is the simultaneous and spontaneous appearance of shoe-throwing games within three weeks following the December 14 when Iraqi journalist Muntundhar al-Zaidi threw his shoes at former US President George W. Bush during a press conference. See here for a video. Showing the soles of your shoes is apparently an insult in the Middle East, and this projectile version, which resulted in the arrest and alleged torture of al-Zaidi, hit news headlines the world over. While tragic and a little funny, this is run-of-the-mill news reporting, latching on to any anti-Bush sentiment. It's what happens next that is relevant.
After the incident, a number of internet games in which you hurl shoes at Bush have appeared simultaneously. Some examples can be found here, here, and here. This might seem silly, but with over 100 million shoes chucked in these three games alone (and the games aren't that fun) people are clearly finding something valuable in them. While any art in them clearly lies in the conceptual rather than the aesthetic realm, they make for pretty clean and concise works: humour, political adversity and interactivity are all there. Maybe a bit of catharsis and mute anger.
What strikes me about these games is that so many people saw the footage and immediately interpreted it as a game, and the veracity of that interpretation is proven by the popularity of the phenomenon.
The reason I'm looking at these games in terms of art and not gaming is to show the potential for the Internet as a tool for art production (a rather underused concept in this country), and the potential for this type of art to be both popular and relevant. While invariably pictures of kittens or inane humour work best, there is the possibility of activating your art-making on the web. And remember, it's easy, cheap and fun.
