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Wednesday, August 1, 2007

Warhol Web

What is Andy Warhol's connection to web 2.0? Well I need to do some more research into web 2.0, but I'm pretty sure it's user generated content on the web (eg. myspace, youtube, blogging etc.) Some geek comes up with a catchy way to share some information online, sets it up and then gets the public to generate all the content. So the "creator" merely builds a framework in which everyone else can express themselves. So ideally, web 2.0, in my understanding, promotes free expression. People stay on your site for its content. Content is valuable to webmasters. Some clever webmasters have figured out how to get content for free, by making it easy for the public to express itself.
Warhol did a kind of analog version of this same thing. The Factory was his YouTube. The artists, addicts and other crazies that inhabited the factory provided the content and creative energy for most of Warhol's work, at least during the better part of the 60s anyway. Many of his movies were simply those crazy people just being themselves, acting on their desires. Kind of an early form of "reality" TV.
Ok I'm spent. More on this later.

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