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lawrence weiner has been active since the late
1960s, when he and a few other artists began to
make conceptual art. these artists argued for
the primacy of ideas in art, veering away
from the assumption that objects or materials
are essential to art's constitution. he works
with language and symbology in a variety of
public and private contexts, including indoor
and outdoor installations, sculpture, multiples,
and publications. his aphoristic or poetic
phrases often describe situations which are
inherently physical, but they always have more
open-ended implications, too. homeport is intended to be a gathering place for verbal and symbolic interchange. it is built on software from the palace, a multi-user graphical chat room on the web. there, in an environment that looks like your average palace, visitors are identifiable by their "avatars" as they type messages to each other. at homeport, you instead enter an environment that appears to be flat and distinctly weineresque. there are nine hidden passageways, or portholes, each leading to a new place with the click of a mouse. in each place, there is a multivalent text which you activate by clicking on it. as you move through homeport, you can leave props behind as evidence of your visit, while you are at the same time branded with stigmata, different aesthetic symbols showing where you have been. viewed in its totality, this project might be characterized as playfully existentialist. merriam-webster's on-line dictionary defines existentialism as "a chiefly 20th century philosophical movement ...centering on analysis of individual existence in an unfathomable universe and the plight of the individual who must assume ultimate responsibility for his acts of free will without any certain knowledge of what is right or wrong or good or bad." navigate homeport on your own. even better, arrange a meeting there. |