1 commission

• first footing
I first heard about the.year.dot project in an email from Steven Bode. They had an initial idea and were approaching possible artists before seeking final funding. I was given a brief outline of the project. At that point I had to think.

Would I respond to the brief?
Am I interested?
Do I have enough time to commit to it including contingency time?
My answers were yes.

• final brief
A few months later I received the final brief and go-ahead for the project.

THE BRIEF:
the.year.dot features six specially-commissioned artists' works inspired by a set of random search results culled from the world wide web and based on words in the Book of Revelations.
The start-up for the project is the 'exegesis' web-crawler, developed
specifically for the.year.dot, which performed searches for the 1300 words that comprise the Revelations text. The mass of accumulated data returned by it is stored in a hypertext archive on the.year.dot site.
This hypertext archive was divided equally and given to the artists to
make on-line works, using this random array of 'found' text and imagery either as raw material. or the catalyst for 'interpretation'.

2 production

•artist 2
23 Aug 1999 - you are artist 2
The online archive for artist number 2 held both the found text and also links to images on various websites.

• first try
One of my first ideas was to use the raw materials themselves.  I ran some ideas by Steven Bode via email and phone calls  -  by early October  I had finished a small website called “Everyday Architecture”.
I didn’t feel too confident about the work, it needed additional coding to animate it further – but I wanted it to be viewable without a plugin. In 1999 no plug-ins could be considered as standard.
I use my own website for beta testing work - so Film & Video Umbrella could watch the progression of the work at a hidden web location.
A potential drawback of designing on computers is that preliminary work always has the appearance of being finished. This is also particularly true for graphic design.
It was mutually agreed that Everyday Architecture failed. It failed on many levels – mainly on its reliance on the found images – which  were culled from badly designed sites. It was flawed from the start.
The editorial relationship with Film & Video Umbrella worked well – they had a clear idea of what they wanted from me. I felt very responsible for the work, if it failed it had their name on it too.

• second try
I decided to take a more tangential approach and use the combined text phrases that the web crawler created as a starting point.
The final website has this explanation of how I used the found text.

3 promotion

• postcard
Beyond the promotion that Film & Video Umbrella undertook I decided to produce a printed card of my own. It would promote the two Film & Video Umbrella web projects I had contributed to.
This gets posted to my entire mailing list of about 1300 people.
For online marketing I often produce a banner-ad email. You should also register the site with search engines.
I still find printed advertising to be most effective – I find email-only information on a project unsatisfying – a weak communication.

• creative review
I made a cut-down version of the project for use on Creative Reviews’ first DVD called Fun With Type.