In Augu$t 1996 I read that $ome Eng£i$h organization ca££edArtec wa$ "ca££ing for arti$t$' propo$a£$ for internetproject$ that exp£ore theme of the digita£ or imaginar¥cit¥." I did what an¥ prudent arti$t wou£d do: I foundout who wou£d be making the deci$ion$, then $ubmitted three propo$a£$under three different name$ for project$ $imi£ar to one$ the¥'d$pon$ored in the pa$t. And I of cour$e paid a mode$t bribe to the rightper$on-it'$ on£¥ prudent.

I got a commi$$ion, a$ did $evera£ other arti$t$.

Mone¥ $eem$ to be the centra£ inte££ectua£and ae$thetic theme to thi$ endeavor. To paraphra$e one of the organizer$,"we're $pending $ome $eriou$ mone¥ on thi$ to get Internet arttaken $eriou$£¥."

(¥e$, I'm $eriou$).

Here'$ the premi$e a$ I under$tand it. O$ten$ib£¥, there area number of "important" peop£e in the art wor£d whodon't take the Internet $eriou$£¥ a$ an art medium, peop£ewho wou£d change their mind$ if $eriou$ arti$t$ were paid $eriou$mone¥ to produce $eriou$ art.

I doubt it. Arguing with $tupid peop£e remind$ me of the a££egedChine$e proverb about wre$t£ing with a pig: don't do it; ¥ouget dirt¥ and the pig enjo¥$ it. And an¥wa¥, what can onepo$$ib£¥ $a¥ to $omeone who doubt$ new techno£ogie$can be u$ed for art? Un£e$$ m¥ ca£endar'$ broken, it'$been a centur¥ and a ha£f $ince the invention of photograph¥,eight¥ ¥ear$ $ince Marcel Duchamp's readymades, and $ixt¥ ¥ear$$ince Walter Benjamin's The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.

Who know$, perhap$ peop£e who are $ti££ coming to term$ with the nineteenth centur¥ ma¥ take thi$ work and it$ four-figureprice tag more $eriou$£¥ than m¥ other work. It'$ £ikeJean Cocteau $aid, "Stupidit¥ is a£wa¥s amazing, nomatter how used to it ¥ou become."

Are ¥ou taking thi$ more $eriou$£¥ becau$e ¥ou knowI wa$ paid three thou$and pound$ $ter£ing ... about five thou$andU.$. do££ar$ at the current exchange rate? Wou£d ¥outake it more $eriou$£¥ if ¥ou knew the budget for the entireproject wa$ over thirt¥ thou$and pound$?

I'm $ti££ doubtfu£ about the entire premi$e. I think art wor£d reactionarie$ wou£d be more impre$$ed b¥ Internetpiece$ $igned b¥ famou$ actor$ or mu$ician$.

Ah, the amazing wor£d of art: it'$ a££ rock and rô£e!

Disclaimer

Foundations, Fountains, Filters and $ome $eriou$ Mone¥ was commissionedas part of "Inhabiting Metropolis." Thus I am formally associatedwith the overall project, a conjugal union with which I am somewhat uncomfortable.

Here's how the advance publicity describes the commissions (and thusmy piece) ...

Inhabiting Metropolis is a series of Channel commissions that explorethe metaphoric space of the Internet.

For Inhabiting Metropolis, nine artists have been invited to create Internetprojects which look at aspects of the digital city, and the representationof the Internet as a space which people move through, inhabit, structureand colonise.

Inhabiting Metropolis is a construction of public and private spaceson the Internet, spaces of shared fictions and collective activity. Theartists are the constructors, the facilitators or the navigators.

I wouldn't be writing this disclaimer had the collection of works hada more accurate title, say, Nine Commissioned Pieces by Nine Artists. Afterall, about all these pieces have in common is the funding source and a tangentialreference to a city or cities.

Although there were a number of cultural, linguistic, and aesthetic problemsdealing with the Brits, we did have a common point of reference: none ofus had much of an idea of what the project was about except the money. (That'swhy I included $ome $eriou$ Mone¥: it does seem to be the intellectualand aesthetic foundation of this endeavor.)

One of the organizers described the lack of coördination as a laissez-faireapproach appropriate to working with new media. That's fine, except wheninaccurate associations are made between the pieces after the fact. Forexample, my piece does not "look at aspects of the digital city,"although it might have done so had such an approach been suggested or encouraged.

There are no links here to other sites; the organizers made no attemptto integrate my piece with any others ostensibly part of the same project.It seems rather curious to commission several hypermedia works then discouragelinks between different artists' pieces, but then again it's not my project.

I'm happy with my contribution to Nine Commissioned Pieces by Nine Artists[The Project Formerly Known As Inhabiting Metropolis]. (It says right hereon my artistic license that such semantic exercises are within my remit.)There's nothing wrong with "just" giving artists money and seeingwhat they come up with; it's a gamble that sometimes pays off. It's a simplepremise that doesn't need to be tarted up or justified with implausibleand unconvincing justifications before or after the work's created.

In closing, I should add that I quite like all of the organizers; they'renice people and good company. When it comes to art, though, we can--and did--agreeto differ. The disagreements weren't acrimonious, nothing that couldn'tbe papered over with a little disclaimer. Like this.

The martini formula that's always served me well over the years is Luis Buñuel's, as described in his autobiography My Last Sigh:

To provoke, or sustain, reverie in a bar, you have to drink English gin, especially in the form of a dry martini. To be frank, given the primordial role played in my life by the dry martini, I think I really out to give it at least a page. Like all cocktail, the martini, composed essentially of gin and a few drops of Noilly Prat, seems to have been an American invention. Connoisseurs who like their martinis very dry suggesting a ray of sunlight shine through a bottle of Noilly Prat before it hits the bottle of gin. At a certain period in America it was said that the making of a dry martini should resemble the Immaculate Conception, for, as Saint Thomas Aquinas once noted, the generative power of the Holy Ghost pierced the Virgin's hymen "like a ray of sunlight through a window--leaving it unbroken."

Another crucial recommendation is that the ice be so cold and hard that it won't melt, since there's nothing worse than a watery martini. For those who are still with me, let me give you my personal recipe, the fruit of long experimentation and guaranteed to produce perfect results. The day before your guests arrive, put all the ingredients -- glasses, gin, and shaker -- in the refrigerator. Use a thermometer to make sure the ice is about twenty degrees below zero (centigrade). Don't take anything out until your friends arrive; then pour a few drops of Noilly Prat and a half demitasse spoon of Angostura bitters over the ice. Shake it, then pour it out, keeping only the ice, which retains a faint taste of both. Then pour straight gin over the ice, shake it again, and serve.

It would be stretching things a bit to call technology the new rock and roll, but I'm not sure if it's stretching things by very much. My friends the Wahlbergs had the equivalent of a NASA backstage pass at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory to see the first images from the Mars Pathfinder explorer thingie. Even the vice president of the United States was there, although though that's not saying much. Since the vice president's wife has made a name for herself as one of the country's most reviled censors of contemporary music, the secret service agents won't let him go near a stadium concert.

Willy's premise is that everyone is certain that their cats piss and shit more than other cats. Thus he intends to market his new product as Heavy Shitter Kitty Litter. I think he's got a winner on his hands, so to speak.

I think there's an important lesson there, but I'm not sure what it is.

Nice work, Roy!

Their counselor told them to reaffirm their commitment to "a just marriage" by driving around town with the previously mentioned "JUST MARRIED" proclamations. Their marital mentor sounded like an opportunistic scoundrel, but since the just married couple seemed reasonably happy, who's to say?

I fell asleep dreaming about the possibilities.

After I photographed the huge model of Paul Bunyan and his blue ox Babe, I didn't have to exaggerate the size of the figures: they really were that big. I did, however, remove the boy who was milking babe until he realized that Babe's udder was actually Babe's testicle sack. The boy's parents captured his mistake with their video camera; the documentation will no doubt make good blackmail material when he's a teenager. I don't want to embarrass him more than his parents undoubtedly will, so I vanished him.

With the kid gone, though, there's no scale to the photograph to show how tall the figures are. You'll have to make my word for it.

Dear Mr. Rinehart,

Thank you for your interesting web site. However, I need some technical advice. Here in Sydney, when I log on to your site, everything appears upside down. I assume this is part of the same phenomenon that cause water to travel down the drain and areas of meteorological pressure to spin in the opposite direction than in the Northern hemisphere. Using my laptop makes the adjustments necessary to solve this problem easier than using the desktop, but then the question, of course, is what about the small monitor problem that results from the laptop.

Please don't think me too forward or too naive for asking the artist how to view his art.

Thank you.

pcf

I found pcf's queries troubling, for they revealed an unpleasant truth: I don't know what I'm doing. This Internet publishing nonsense demands a lot more technical knowledge than I have, and the gap between what I know and what I should know grows wider by the hour.

My background in photography led me to overlook the problems pcf experienced: as a photographer I'm used to looking at images upside down in my view cameras and reversed left to right in my Rolleiflex. (Actually, I have more than one Rolleiflex but couldn't figure out how to spell the plural.)

I suppose I need some sort of "intelligent" image-inverting software that will serve up different images for different parts of the globe. I have no idea whether that's possible, but I'm almost certain it's too complicated for me.

And who knows? Maybe my technical friends who help me in my electronic publishing endeavors have already installed such software, which negates the effects of the similar program pcf may be using. Hell, the Australian government may also have image flipping software installed, making this problem almost impossible to solve.

What can I tell pcf? I fear anything I say will only add support to the widely-held belief that artists rarely excel at customer service.

Fortunately, I remembered the secret of hot tubs from years ago: peripheral vision. We had a long lovely talk.

When discussing events from a decade or two ago with old friends, I'm continually amazed that one of us has remembered what the other has forgotten and vice versa. In some extreme cases, my friends and I don't share even a single memory about an old adventure.

Now I wonder if I ever really had to print every frame from each roll of film I exposed? Perhaps. Doing such pointless drudgery sounds horrible; perhaps I've intentionally--but subconsciously--forgotten the experience. Such selective memory doesn't bother me; it's one of the reasons I've had such an enjoyable life.

Wow! And I thought I had a low entertainment threshold!

We had an enjoyable reunion. After quite a lot of wine, we congratulated each other on our successes. And, after a bit more wine, we both even believed it.