Ana Somnia
THIS is a WEIRD website! At first, the Doctor was stumped about what to do. A strange soundtrack plays while something is loaded, a counter showing progress for several seconds. And then...well, then we see Ana getting ready for bed, and a long (hairy) forearm menacingly pointing from the supposed door in the wall opposite the bed. Now what? Well, that is something you'll have to find out...
Claiming to be a "weird greeting from East Berlin" (was there an Internet when East Berlin still existed?) the Doctor was impressed with the work that went into the fantastical project.
(If you want a clue about how to get started, click here.)
- Written by Walter Walter
Humanæ
What is art? Dr. Weird Web rarely thinks about topics this broad or deep. However, when he came across Humanæ he had to pause and think. That, of course, is what Angélica Dass wants the viewer to do: pause and think.
What is "race"? What difference does class bestow on one person over another? How deeply does ones humanity get reflected externally? Ms Dass is a Brazilian artist who has been working on this project since 2012. She clearly describes this as an "work in progress" and may not be concluded until the entire population of the Earth is so documented. She is taking portraits (they may even be classed as "sterile portraits" of volunteers from the shoulders up, with no clothing visible. She then matches the subjects skin tone along the Pantone® Color Identification scale. Are any two individuals exactly the same color? Apparently not.
- Written by Walter Walter
The Polapola Project
The Polapola Project (Das Polapola-Projekt)
Dr. Weird Web has wondered, at various odd hours of the night, what it would be like to take a picture of a picture of a picture. At what point does the first picture disappear? What happens to the scene in the picture once the next oldest picture is removed? There have been rumors of such wonderings on the Internet and now we have found a weird one!
The Polapola project started in 1995 on a beach in Brittany, France, when Mark-Steffen Göwecke took the first picture. "On a beach I photographed with a the SX-70 a [P]olaroid showing sand and stones. Again the resulting picture was photographed with the Polaroid-camera. The distances in space and time became larger." That is how Mr. Göwecke describes this project. But the words do not do justice to the flow of picture after picture the site makes available. Much of the content is in German, but a brief English description of each picture is available by hovering over it. A "time-line" of all 262 pictures is displayed along the bottom of the page. Scroll along to see how each scene contains the photograph of the prior scene. The flash animation of the individual photos makes it appear to zoom in and out as you click the '<' and '>' symbols.
The last picture was taken in February 2014 and the project is "closed". But it is certainly a permanent addition to the Weird on the Web. If you visit the site, be sure to select the "Flash" version for the animation it offers.
The site also hosts several other artsy projects by Herr Göwecke, but the Polapola Project is plenty weird enough to justify a visit.
- Written by Walter Walter