Day: March 22, 2011

After the surf club experiments jstchillin seems retrograde. Several "gallery art" structures are imported to the web: (i) curators (whose names are constantly mentioned); (ii) a schedule of exhibitions (one week instead of a month); (iii) the curators control the schedule and who is invited. Reasserting authority in this manner after the comparative looseness of letting invitees post whenever and whatever they wanted isn't softened just because you call the site "just chilling." In fact, calling a site of such obvious structured workaholism "chillin" seems disingenuous, and colors how the viewer perceives the work. Some of the projects are laid-back goofs but others certainly aren't (caution: sign-in required). This is not to say there isn't interesting work on the site, only that the spin was never convincing.

"Spirit Surfers" has the same problem--every post is supposed to be a joke about New Age consciousness via web consumption. By contrast, "Nasty Nets" and "Dump.fm" work because they wed unpretentious names with unpretentious practices (which may in fact be quite laborious--they can sneak up on you).