Slant.org: Speaking out against censorship
By Jeff Mellen
Slant.org is a 1999 web art gallery with anti-censorship works designed
primarily by Asian-American artists. Like most digital art galleries,
its content ranges from the well-designed and thought-provoking to
the hastily-assembled, but the gallery does have the galvanizing message
that censorship, particularly censorship governed by a largely white
male U.S. government, is only going to inhibit creativity and thought.
Unfortunately, the site never really got off the ground; there have
been no additions to the site since November 1999, and there are fewer
than ten exhibits. Each of the ten exhibits do focus on one
aspect of digital censorship; Jon Young's QuickTime short lampoons
how MGM pulled the 1944 Warner Brothers WWII cartoon, "bugs Nips
the Nips," while many Americans still do not know about Japanese
interment camps such as Heart Mountain. Virgil Wong's Web Voyager
X, a mock "safe" web browser, targets the 1998 Child Online
Protection Act, which persecutes any content provider found guilty
of distributing content that may be harmful to minors. Eugene
Thacker's "Medporn," described as "the digital organization
of the body through the lens of pornography and medical surgery,"
forces viewers to question their notions of censorship, as medical
photos of (sometimes injured) genitalia are displayed in a porn-site-style
fashion.
More often than not, however, the Slant exhibits are too thin.
Several would have had potential, such as Nelson Wong's Tianamen Squared,
if they were developed further. Others seem like lightly dressed
message postings. "Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil, See No Evil"
is essentially three links to self-censoring sites obfuscated by faulty
DHTML, the link to the "Censorium" doesn't work, and another
exhibit is simply a flashing photo of female genitalia, intended to
show that Buddhist reverance of the organ as an energy center might
come under U.S. digital censorship laws. To be fair, all the
exhibits have their points, but some suffer from the 1999 epidemic
of unrealistic Internet expectations. VC funding and a warehouse
of pet food doesn't get you a company; nor should three pages and
an abstract graphic serve as an art gallery.
The most informative and interesting part of the site, as it turns
out, are not the galleries-- but the links and timeline to events
in digital censorship. It is a gateway to independent organizations,
pro and anti-censorship coalitions, and law sites. In addition,
the artists' recommended readings page is somewhat provocative-- providing
a lead into the motivation of the artists. It is one hot spot
in an otherwise lukewarm site. With more development and effort,
it may have been more successful in raising questions about Internet
policing and digital Big Brother-dom.