Filed under: Fun, Internet, Time-Wasters
JacksonPollock.org - Today's Time Waster
by Amber Rhea Oct 6th 2006 at 2:50PM
Always dreamed of being an abstract expressionist painter, but hate the idea of getting all that messy paint all over yourself? Well, fret no more! Now, thanks to JacksonPollock.org, you can be a Flash-based abstract expressionist painter! Don't you think if Jackson Pollock were alive today, he'd take advantage of the technology available to him?
Admittedly, JacksonPollock.org is a bit disconcerting at first. The site loads as a blank window, so you're confused to begin with. (Although you won't be, dear readers, since I've given you the heads up.) When you move your cursor anywhere within the browser window, a streak of "paint" is splashed across your virtual canvas. Each time you click, the paint changes color. And you don't have the luxury of picking up your "brush" and deciding where to place it next; oh no, that wouldn't be abstract enough.
Potentially, this can provide hours of amusement and artistic exploration. Just look at the masterpiece I created:
Worth about $2,000,000, wouldn't you say?
(Thanks, Niki!)
Admittedly, JacksonPollock.org is a bit disconcerting at first. The site loads as a blank window, so you're confused to begin with. (Although you won't be, dear readers, since I've given you the heads up.) When you move your cursor anywhere within the browser window, a streak of "paint" is splashed across your virtual canvas. Each time you click, the paint changes color. And you don't have the luxury of picking up your "brush" and deciding where to place it next; oh no, that wouldn't be abstract enough.
Potentially, this can provide hours of amusement and artistic exploration. Just look at the masterpiece I created:
(Thanks, Niki!)
So, just how good at time waster games are you? Think you've got the stuff? Well, The World's Hardest Game 2.0 doesn't think you do.
Yes, amazingly, it's possible to have a sequel to a game called "The World's Hardest Game". It doesn't seem logically possible, since if the first one was actually the world's hardest, how could another one come along and share the moniker? It made me doubt the name in the first place. That is, until I tried the game.
The mechanics of the game are very simple. You are a small red square, ...
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
matt said 4:49PM on 10-06-2006
We posted about this over on Drawn.ca a little while back - stirred up a bit of controversy in the comments section:
http://drawn.ca/2006/06/12/being-jackson-pollock/#comments
Apparently the basic code was ripped off of Eric Stamen?
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Cory Anotado said 8:05AM on 10-10-2006
From those comments from Drawn!
# Cassidy Curtis Says:
June 13th, 2006 at 9:56 am
I feel the need to clarify the history here a little bit on behalf of the team at Stamen, who are good friends of mine.
The original SWF that Stamen put up was just a little toy they created for fun. They didn’t go around claiming it was “art” or any such nonsense. These are not pretentious people. Go check out their site, you’ll see what I mean. Very down to earth, hard-working people.
So then this Manetas guy took Stamen’s little SWF– the entire thing, intact, since a SWF file does not contain source code and cannot be modified– and put it on his own website, claiming he himself had created it. He then asked Eric for the source code, so he could modify it– apparently because he didn’t even know enough about Flash to reverse-engineer it, which is incredibly stupid when you think about it, because it is quite frankly a very simple toy! (A great idea, but very simple if you spend a few moments analyzing how it works.)
And now, years later, Manetas has stolen yet another artist’s name, and is still passing off Stamen’s work as his own, now calling it “Jackson Pollock by Miltos Manetas”. Give me a break.
Anyone who’s too techno-illiterate to reverse-engineer a simple Flash toy has no business calling himself a “digital artist”, or whatever silly name this guy has invented to market himself. Time to move on.
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