Do you remember Neen?

Translated via Google from german magazine Musikexpress

Are you Neen?

Electricboogiewoogie.com, letmesleep.com wewillattack.com no joke sites, but tracks of Flash Player works, also called Neen Art. The Greek artist Miltos Manetas network founded an art movement that paints with pixels rather than with Farbpinseln and adjust their work all in one e-mail.

Miltos Manetas chose the art after he had received in the 80-years ago, a book of abstract expressionist Jackson Pollock in his hands. The many colorful blobs looked pretty simple and it was Manetas big dream of becoming an artist. So he began to paint his first painting, mostly of televisions, laptops or a giant cable clutter. And most of the pictures painted by his assistants were completed, although there Miltos ideas but no talent found in himself - until he saw the flash animation.

His first mini-animation he made in 2001 Internet: www.jesusswimming.com a floating Jesus with bleeding hands. The clumsy animation would have sunk without a lot of attention in the depths of the Internet, if not always sober and more of these animated programs had appeared on the net. Due to the increasingly easy access to almost any flash programming could create with a computer and a reasonably creative idea his own animations. Many of these effects showed that there was in this form never were very easy to grasp and established themselves as a handy logo in the subconscious. Most of these sites had neither a meaning nor an intention, but stood as independent objects in space.

What was for many a nice gimmick, Miltos Manetas described as art. He demanded a name for this direction, which should stand out from the previously existing network of art. A computer of the branding agency Lexicon was fed with all sorts of data, and finally spat the word out NEEN. Miltos was great because Neen is not just a palindrome (a word that is read from front and rear right) and rhymes with screen, but in ancient Greek means "Right now, it's not a second later." Soon after, he wrote a manifesto and a diffuse said Neen designates a still undefined generation of visual artists, so-called Neenstars that would see the Internet as a vast continent and through their Web browsers could see much further than through ordinary window glass. The reactions were mixed on creation Manetas, the New York Times ridiculed Neen way than amusing, but doubted that this would establish itself as the art style.

Nevertheless identified a growing international community with the Neen movement. Software developers, animators and animation designers kill itself with the most absurd mini-animations on the Internet and expanded this Manetas term Neen art. The artist Angelo Plessas created interactive animations consisting of structures and patterns that sank under their own chaos and in turn, translated by Neen architect Andreas Angelidakis into virtual buildings were. In addition to the zig-zag structures also Neen-poetry arose, an initial experiment Japanese poet Mai Ueda. It combined simple animation, with their texts and then held her readings on Skype. But Neen art not only finds an audience on the Internet, but will also be shown in numerous exhibitions. The domains of the works will be sold as art ordinary objects. Raphaël Rozendaal, required for some of its Web pages up to $ 10,000, and even sells his first Neen Apps on the iTunes Store. Next, Rozendaal Neen would like to develop a computer game in which one walks through various landscapes and cities and everything that affects what is, as ice melts, "You just see two hands in front of you and the world with melted cars and trees and clouds. Rozendaal dream could soon come true, just like the dream to become an artist by Miltos Manetas. If today Manetas Jackson Pollock googlet his former role model, appears as the second entry (after Wikipedia), the domain www.jacksonpollock.org a Neen factory, which he designed himself and a few years ago in 2006 with the "50 coolest websites" ders 'Times Magazine' count.