THE DIGITAL ARTS

Let You Digits Do the Sailing:
Sending Your Art Out on the Internet

Jeffrey Bary

[Ed: Links to web pages and/or e-mail addresses which have become inactive since the publication of this article have been enclosed in curly brackets { }. Replacement links have been provided where possible.]

The table "Internet Tools for the Artist" describes a number of Internet tools. The table is not meant to be exhaustive, but points out the features that would be of interest both to the artist and to the general user.

Three of the most important properties for the artist to consider are what in this table are called media, resolution, and audience.

Media is fairly obvious: text, image, audio, and so forth. Here, resolution refers to the amount of data sent to represent a work of art (visual, sound, etc.). Images are described in pixels, the individual dots on the screen that make up the picture. With sound, resolution refers to sound samples per second, and with video, to frames per second. The more dots (or samples or frames), the better the final results.

So, then, why not send a very large number of dots for the very best image? You could, but this would limit the number of people who could see the work. Many people have only modem connections. Although a modern modem is fast enough for text and small images, even a moderate-sized image could take minutes to download. High-speed direct network connections are needed for large full-color images and motion. Until everybody has the bandwidth offered by a high-speed connection at home, resolution is the most important area to be clear about when presenting art on the Internet.

In the table, audience is about how many people will see the work. Some involve individual connections, so the audience is inevitably small. On the other end of the scale are programs that broadcast to a very large audience -- thousands, potentially millions. Other programs reach medium audiences, either because the programs are designed for such connections, or because the technology is not yet available to large numbers of people.

It's helpful to think about who initiates the transaction: is it the sender, or is it the person who wants to receive a work that's being broadcast or is available for downloading?

A realtime program allows a performance or conversation to be sent out over the network as it is taking place, and allows both sender and receiver to participate. I'll define the other categories in the context of specific applications.

The Programs

This brings up the question of who may participate. E-mail requires nothing other than access to a computer that can send e-mail and an address to send mail to. Many of the other types of communication have a specific way to join. With a mailing list, you would send e-mail to list-maintaining software, which would add your name to those of the other people interested in discussing the topic of the list. In some cases, a list has a moderator who must okay each member and can drop people from the list, and who may choose to moderate the discussion as well. When you send a message to the list address, the software automatically resends it to each person who has joined the list. Thus you don't have to maintain the whole mailing list yourself -- a job that is time-consuming, tedious, and error-prone, and one that computers can do better.

News (or Usenet) seems very much like a mailing list. The difference is that you don't need to join, and you need a special program called a newsreader to read it and contribute to it. Each newsgroup has a name that reflects the topic of discussion, the parts of the name becoming more specific from left to right -- rec.arts.dance or rec.photo.technique.art .

FTP (file transfer protocol) and Gopher are used to gather files from across the Internet. FTP allows the artist to place either text or binary files in a public place, where a member of the audience can retrieve them at will. FTP is somewhat primitive; the viewer must know the Internet address, the name of the file, and the type of file in order to retrieve it and properly view it. Gopher is similar, except that it can display in logical menus in plain text, listing items to be viewed, and can automatically display some of the files retrieved. Both FTP and Gopher are built into all Web browsers. You can recognize FTP and Gopher resources because their URLs (uniform resource locator) start with ftp:// or gopher:// .

Several types of tools provide a realtime communication stream. You can have a conversation, using text, or audio and video, with one or more people over the Internet. A program called Talk is the oldest of this type. The interface is a screen with your typing in the top half and the respondent's in the lower half. IRC (Internet Relay Chat) allows groups of people to meet in a chat room. The topic may be unspecified or specified by a moderator, who may also control who may attend.

The most popular video teleconferencing software is CU-SeeMe, developed at Cornell University. It is available free for both PCs and Macs. It allows you to have a video teleconference between two or more people in small black-and-white windows. The similar Apple Media Conference presents the image in color. Both programs offer a means of showing digital images at the same time: CU-SeeMe can send single slides and large black-and-white images; Apple Media Conference has a "whiteboard" that participants can draw or write on.

At first glance, Mbone video and audio resembles these teleconferencing progams. It has a video window, a shared whiteboard, and an audio controller. The crucial difference is that with packages like CU-SeeMe, each participant receives a separate connection on the network. So if two people at the same location are watching a performance, they each get a duplicate stream. With Mbone, which stands for Multicasting Backbone, the originator sends out only a single stream of data, and anyone who wants to watch can tune in -- very much like television or radio today. Transmitting video takes a lot of network space; if only a single stream is being sent, it can be of higher quality without increasing the network load.

Netscape and other graphical World-Wide Web browsers can present text, static images, animations, and audio all in a single interface. A Web browser also has the more traditional Internet tools, such as FTP, e-mail, Gopher, and News, built in. You can add plug-ins -- outside programs that can extend the Web browser's capabilities in such areas as text-to-speech conversion and MIDI. You can also configure your browser to call up helper applications when you select a link that returns, rather than a new Web page, a pointer to a resource that the browser cannot display by itself. Two examples are RealAudio and VDOLive. RealAudio send a stream of audio information in real time over the Internet as requested. VDOLive does the same with a video stream.

Time-Warner describes its Palace as "an Internet-based multimedia chat architecture, kind of a cross between IRC and HyperCard, yet unique in many respects." It functions as a Web browser, and it also has the ability to control the visual and spatial environment -- the default is a palace with a number of rooms that can be visited. You can visit other "palaces," or you can create an environment on your own computer, which others can visit. Visitors take on any visage and expression they choose and can pick up objects that are in the rooms and carry them around. The visitors' comments are portrayed cartoon-style in balloons. There is a one-time $20 registration fee; until you are registered, you appear as a yellowish globe with a face on it.

The Internet provides the artist with a place to exhibit works and to create new ones. Also, it provides a tool for research via access to library catalogs and the ability to interview people who are the primary sources. The artist of today cannot afford to ignore this opportunity.

Posted 20 May 1996. Revised 24 May 2004.