Browser - NicheInterests/mistfunk GitHub Wiki

A browser is a kind of visual way of navigating information -- a file browser such as Windows Explorer helps you locate files and programs and interact with them (instructing them to copy, delete or print, for instance) while the kind of browser most of us use most frequently is likely the humble web browser, enabling readers to access other, related web pages by activating hyperlinks.

In a Mist context, Browser with a capital B refers to something quite different, a 1997 installment of area code 604's long-running Artropolis exhibition series that required art patrons to select exhibits from a catalogue and sign them out, each artwork constrained to the contents of an archival filing box, from a white-gloved reception. Some artists created work on a micro scale to fit the dimensions of the exhibition medium, while others got creative in finding ways to include a big multimedia experience in a small cardboard box (eg. a CD of music by The Pseudos that you could listen to for 90 minutes.) (Still others went gonzo, and submitted "a box full of rubber snakes" as their entry.)

Browser was an incredible, unique experience for the art viewers, and a black mark on the Artropolis legacy to most of its community, who were accustomed to the exhibitions allowing them to demonstrate their best work made on their own terms, rather than submitting to constraints imposed by an outside curator. During planning for Artropolis 2001 Cthulu turned up to a town hall inspired by Browser and prepared to make a donation to encourage more experiences along its lines, but the feedback from exhibitors was otherwise materially negative, so the final couple of installments of the exhibition series were more conservative and less ambitious in their conception.

Browser was influential to Mist because Cthulu loved it as an art consumer, and the community it was intended to serve hated having its constraints imposed on them. In his own curation of artpacks, Cthulu has striven to appreciate that he is there to serve the artists rather than compel them to submit to his curatorial vision -- that the greatest service he can be to his community of creators is to showcase the art they chose to make on their own terms rather than requiring them to deviate from their standard practice to comply with his unwanted and extraneous conditions.