the Gas
Station an interactive web-project devised for the Laboratory
at the Ruskin School of Drawing & Fine Art, Oxford, 1996
... arising from a discussion about authorship and copyright with Paul Bonaventura, and, building on my observation about how Oxford College noticeboards were used for the exchange of information and services, Gas Station explored the idea of using the web as a sort of swap-shop of artists' ideas. The title came not from Hopper's lonely Gas Station on a forest road, but from the kind of city centre refuelling stop that sells just about everything you need.
Artists were invited to donate ideas for
artworks that they had devised but which, for
whatever reason, they were never going to use.
These ideas were placed (unattributed) on the
website, freely available for anyone to take and
adopt for their own practice. I have since seen
the project replicated in other forms. Although
the site is no longer officially active, you are
still welcome to use any of the ideas. Let me
know of any interesting outcomes through the
contact link on my home page.
The original site was designed by Jake Tilson, who, as the artist-publisher of Atlas Magazine, had been very quick to grasp the
potential of the web for collaboration amongst
artists, writers and researchers.
screen shots
The artists who donated ideas
