2004

I’m not sure about the terms “exhibition” and “curate” to describe a project of ongoing inclusive aggregation - it seems to imply a limited space with a rotating set of features which are hosted, presented, and cared for (hence curated), like a museum floor or a gallery, when in fact blogrolls are collections more like a periodical and its archive - the primary responsibility is initial selection, not presentation and rotation.

If the word “archivist” seems to under-emphasize the work involved in filtering a high volume of potential submissions, perhaps “editor”…?

Obviously, any post with claims about “first” anything is going to call for some serious definition of terms - especially with as recent and slippery a term as “blog.”

I’m inclined to agree with mez’s “bah” (”blog art historicizing”? “blogart already hypertextificated”?) - and even consider forwarding as candidates even earlier pieces in the blog timeline, such as the original NCSA “What’s New” list (1993) or perhaps Slashdot (1997) - the tech news blog constantly covered net art, including blog art, although it has kept art as a topic rather than a formal category. So much depends on what counts as art, and whether only exclusive listings count - I need to think a lot more about this, and perhaps do a followup post.

http://www.livejournal.com/users/netwurker

[since 03].

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