Own, Be Owned, or Remain Invisible

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by Kat Mount



According to the art world Heath Bunting is on a mission. But don't ask him to define what it is. Heath Bunting is a contemporary British artist born in 1966. Based in Bristol, he is the founder of the site irational.org and was one of the early practitioners in the 1990s of Net. Art. Net. Art refers to a group of artists who worked in the medium of Internet art from 1994. The term "Net. Art" also means Internet art and covers a wide range of artistic practices. Net. Art means art that uses the Internet as its medium and that cannot be experienced in any other way. There is often a high degree of intimacy between the user and the art on the web.

Heath Bunting’s Own, Be Owned, Or Remain Invisible addresses the commercialization of the Internet. By clicking one of the hyperlinked words, the reader is sent to that domain, which may or may not be owned. At the time of this work's creation in 1988 many of the domain names weren’t owned, but are registered today. Some domains may have been owned in the past twelve years, but are no longer owned anymore, therefore touching on the transience of Internet ownership. His work also shows the range of absurd domain names that companies have purchased. Bunting effectively takes ownership of the following words by leaving them as normal text: Heath Bunting, Heath Bunting flyposter, graffiti, artist, art, radio, pirate, bulletin board, those are just a few of the many.

Resources

http://www.afsnitp.dk/onoff/Texts/broggernetart,we.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heath Bunting http://artelectronicmedia.com/artwork/own-be-owned-or-remain-invisible http://hybridge.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/hybrid-discourses-overview-4.pdf http://artelectronicmedia.com/artwork/the-ghost-of-vannevar-bush-hacked-my-server