Rafaël Rozendaal

http://www.newrafael.com/websites/

How many hours do we spend surfing the web endlessly, searching for something to fill our time? How much time do we spend watching pointless videos, scrolling through random websites, reading random memes? The answer is billions and billions of hours. The beautiful (or possibly terrible) thing about the internet is that we will never run out of sites to scroll and videos to watch because for every hour we spend procrastinating millions more things are being uploaded to the internet. Visual artist Rafaël Rozendaal has taken advantage of our attention on the internet to create a new genre of art. Combining pop art elements with web design Rozendaal has a collection of over fifty websites created simply as pieces of art. Whether or not these websites are actually art could be debated, whether or not they are entertaining cannot be questioned. Each website consists of a simple page with a shape or image. Some move reminiscent of iTunes visualizer, some manipulate the cursor and some have interactive elements. All are displayed simply and under enigmatic web addresses.

            Rozendaal is a Dutch-Brazilian artist who has been creating these websites since 2001 and they receive over 15 million views per year. Some of his websites such as flamingcursor.com are very straight forward. This website consists of a plain black screen with your white cursor which when moved about, emits flames. Other sites are more abstract such as everythingyouseeisinthepast.com which consists of a screen of shifting shapes and patterns. In the same way as the content, the style of art changes in many websites. Some sites such as papertoilet.com are very pop art-y in style and this particular page depicts a simple roll of toilet paper. Others center more on shape and color rather than literal things.

            In some ways Rozendaal’s work could be categorized with the hundreds of pointless iPhone apps like the applications that just show a crackling fire or the thousands of eye pleasing screen savers, but in some sites, Rozendaal accesses something deeper and darker. Fataltotheflesh.com requires the mouse holder to click and drag lines onto a white screen. The red lines that appear reveal themselves to be bleeding cuts which drip blood down the screen. In brokenself.com the viewer clicks the screen to shatter a mirror into hundreds of shards

            While this art may be abstract in making a statement or identifying itself in the traditional art sense, there is no doubt that Rozendaal has created a unique and completely relevant something. His medium of the internet is sure to gather viewers and the bizarreness of the titles of the works suggest something more than just procrastination entertainment. What that is will surely be determined by one of the millions of people who stumble upon the sites during a daily stroll through the internet. So next time you’ve got some time to kill skip over Facebook and Tumblr and check out Rafaël Rozendaal’s web art.