Superbad is a noted

web art file:Simple Net Art Diagram.svg, upright=1.3, "Simple Net Art Diagram", a 1997 work by Michael Sarff and Tim Whidden Internet art (also known as net art or web art) is a form of new media art distributed via the Internet. This form of art circumv ...

installation created by graphic designer Ben Benjamin in 1997. Superbad.com received a 1999 Webby award in the "Weird" category, and was one of nine websites featured in the Whitney Museum Biennial in 2000. Superbad began as a test bed for Benjamin's web design for technology corporations; his clients ranged from E! Online to Nippon Telegraph and Telephone. The installation uses images from Japanese pop culture. The website serves primarily as an artistic work that was produced using the tools and methods of

web design Web design encompasses many different skills and disciplines in the production and maintenance of websites. The different areas of web design include web graphic design; user interface design (UI design); authoring, including standardised code a ...

. This genre of art is often referred to as

. The site consists of a veritable maze of inter-linked visual, conceptual "subprojects" ranging from two-tone and technical-looking to wacky, colorful, and even bizarre. Often a subproject will have clickable elements linked to other pages within that subproject, or to another, or that just provide visual richness (e.g., the "follow" subproject has a grid of circles with arrows that follow the mouse cursor; each circle is a link to a different page within the site). Some of the pages contain narrative elements. There are 143 different pages, with the main page serving as a hub to the subprojects. Clicking anywhere on the "bad" will link to somewhere within each subproject. ''

Time Time is the continuous progression of existence that occurs in an apparently irreversible process, irreversible succession from the past, through the present, and into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequ ...

'' magazine cited "the very randomness of the electronic images" offered on the website that lures the viewer "deeper and deeper into its playful maze". Benjamin sells nothing on Superbad, and received little extra traffic from the Webby award, though he did receive more junk mail when the

International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences (IADAS) is an organization that was founded in 1998 in New York City to recognize and acknowledge excellence in interactive content across emerging technologies. According to the organizati ...

put his name on a list. Up to 10 percent of the websites featured in the 2000 Biennal consisted of various net art projects, marking the first time they were considered "so prominently among the traditional arts", according to Salon. Benjamin "didn't really start thinking of Superbad as art until the art people started finding it", but insisted that the Whitney's selection of his and other web art projects "makes it ''look'' more valid to the art crowd. So all of a sudden because it's in a museum it's not crap anymore?"

References

External links

Superbad

Ben Benjamin at the Whitney Museum Artport
{{DEFAULTSORT:Superbad (Website) Art websites Internet properties established in 1997 Webby Award winners

See also

References

External links