Kazimir Malevich’s The Black Square marks a turning point in art history in that it is a synonym for the possibility of the artwork’s reduction. HTML-Malevich (1996), an earlier work by Codemanipulator than the one shown here, intends to do the same by stripping the black square of its very “materiality”. In addition, the viewer is confronted with the historical dimension of using text code as painting: in a later re-interpretation of the artwork, HMTL-CSS-Malevich (2001), pictured here, the size of the code is further reduced to a few lines by a newer standard of coding. Also, depending on the browser (the interpreter), the rendered results will be either Malevich’s square or his circle.
#netart #webart #browserart #art #netart