A from still from the CCHQ video by Nicolas Sassoon.

Just wanted to give a quick heads’ up that Bad at Sports’ blogger/columnist Nicholas O’Brien has a guest post up on The Creators’ Project, a website focused on technology, culture and creativity. Nicholas writes what he describes as a “love letter” to Computers Club, “a group site dedicated to sharing art made with or by computers that was launched by artist Krist Wood.” I’m posting a tiny sliver of Nicholas’ essay below, but please click on over and check out his full post!

Since the first post on May 2, 2009, I have been addicted to Computers Club. The project, a group site dedicated to sharing art made with or by computers was launched by artist Krist Wood, and has been lauded as one of the preeminent locations of so-called netart and artists working with computer generated/manipulated imagery. Although the template of the site follows other previous group-based projects, I’ve never been completely thrilled with the idea of calling Computers Club a blog. This is probably due in part to how the content found within Computers Club has, since it’s origin, been a place where artists/members have been able to share work that typically reaches beyond the standard fair of netart.

When I talked with many of its members over the course of several weeks, they discussed how previous engagements with other group projects and/or personal blog-based sites had influenced the kind of experience they expected or hoped for with Computers Club (henceforth abbreviated to CC). Former outlets had similarly served as a way of showing work, but some members felt as though those projects didn’t offer avenues to push their practices beyond some self-induced restricting labeling of “netart” and whatever that label implied. As a way to combat these anxieties, CC members found ways to address more broad artistic concerns that were not solely located in computer-based art by creating works that could be conceptually considered through the lens of illustration, painting, performance, experimental video, and even music. Read more.

Claudine Isé