Myron Turner: Bstat Zero
February 2006
Myron Turner: Bstat Zero
Myron Turner’s Bstat Zero is an interactive “log analyzer” examining the logs that record visits to web servers and revealing the hidden architecture and interconnectedness of websites. When activated, it was a cooperative project focusing on the sites of new media artists and groups. Instead of standard web-traffic statistics, the tool emphasizes the origins of that traffic, such as specific countries, domains, IP addresses, browsers, and referral sources, including search engines and other websites. Bstat Zero originally performed cross-site comparisons by operating in two versions: one hosted on participating artists’ websites and another on BstatZero.org, where archives from participants were collected and analyzed. The project enabled users to explore patterns of viewership across multiple sites, examining who was visiting, how they arrived, and when. By exposing these data trails, Bstat Zero challenged the boundaries between public and private information online and offered insight into the relationship between the individual and the network.
Bstat Zero relies on a network of sites that are no longer active, along with CGI scripts that may no longer function correctly.
Myron Turner (b. 1935; Winnipeg, Canada) combines photography, lightboxes, printmaking, and computers in his work. He has exhibited in galleries and artist-run centers throughout Canada, as well as in the United States, the United Kingdom, and South America. His digitally produced woodblock prints have won several awards at Boston Printmakers North American Biennials. Turner has worked with the web as a medium since 1994, and his web-based art has been included in online exhibitions and collections such as the runme.org software art repository, the Rhizome Artbase, Machinista 2003, and the JavaMuseum. In Canada, he has received new media grants from the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity (1998, 1999, 2000) and cofounded the Manitoba Visual Arts Program in 1994.
Gate Pages
Every month from March 2001 to February 2006, the Whitney invited an artist or collective to present their work in the form of a “Gate Page” on artport. Each page was meant to function as a portal to the artist’s own sites and projects. The Gate Pages comprise a range of artistic approaches to the format—while some of them are designed as entry points to the respective artist’s website or promote a recently launched work, others take the form of a more complex stand-alone project.
Wherever necessary and possible, these works are made functional through emulation and reconstructions from the Internet Archive. Not all of them have been restored to their original state and their conservation is ongoing. You can also view the original Gate Pages archive to see how they were presented at the time of their creation.
artport
View more on artport, the Whitney Museum's portal to Internet and new media art.