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BFFA3AE: 3 BFFs Are Making Some Rly Rad Meta Net Art

Internet art collective BFFA3AE are making some seriously eye-popping and thought-provoking net art.

Internet art collective BFFA3AE (Best Friends Forever And 3ver And Ever) are surpassing their peers in what’s now a crowded virtual community by creating some seriously thought-provoking net art. The trio’s work is not just confined to the digital sphere, the group has created pieces that transcend the boundaries between the digital and physical worlds as well.

Through net art, the crew aims to examine the implications of the ever-multiplying ties between people and technology. In doing so they have created a kind of meta-net art which occupies the post-internet stratosphere. Their creative output consists of an examination of internet graphics and memes through net art itself. Using the same tropes found in obnoxious internet advertising and tween-curated Tumblrs, BFFA3AE have found an interesting way to force-feed the internet its very own banality. They offer us, as viewers, an outlet by which we can ruminate on the role the internet has played in transforming our very psyches.

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The three friends, Daniel Chew, Matthew Gaffney, and Micaela Durand, met in film school and first collaborated in 2007 on a blog. Their artistic output over the years has expanded to include a variety of self-aware digital pieces. Like a great deal of net art, BFFA3AE products are informed by irony. The “crap” factor is turned way up in some pieces like uh duh yeah and the initiation of something. But their work goes beyond examination of the gaudiness of the internet and also showcases the ways in which our virtual existence has creeped into, and even subsumed, our everyday lives.

One of their really striking pieces is This and that thought, a minimalist, interactive website which employs the soft-spoken speech recognition cyborg lady from the good old days of floppy discs and beige-toned bubble monitors. Her familiar voice speaks in a paradoxically stress-inducing monotone and rambles on about TV, office parties, and even her internal agony about picking out a color for her new car. “The new iPods are out of stock,” she laments, “I want to kill myself.”

Turbulence, 2011.

The piece as a whole is a clever comment on digital-age induced alienation, but one that goes beyond the typical rhetoric. Shallowness and banality are unfortunately inherent in the human experience. Yet underneath the monotonous diary-like ruminations of this bore-of-a-cyborg, there are flashes of “true” emotion. Loneliness reigns even for this normy as she cooes, “this is the best part of my day because I know I won’t be bothered.”

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The group has experimented with social media and connected outlets all over the internet. Through pieces like the time is now they’ve established a presence on YouTube, OkCupid, flickr, Twitter, Tumblr, GoogleDocs, Blingee, and beyond—effectively “winning the internet” with a single virtual installation created for the Klaus Gallery. But the crew is also pushing beyond the confines of the browser interface, and utilizing their curatorial capabilities, have created a book of their own. No doubt it had to be an e-book.

Ad Book is the product of their labors, published by Badlands Unlimited. The project features artists from around the world who were solicited by BFFA3AE to contribute an ad to the book—the contributors had to purchase the space, and in doing so, BFFA3AE created a project that in the very process of its conception was an exploration in advertising. And the output is something really quite awesome. Ad Book creates an e-book like no other, one that is different each time you look at it, and user-malleable on multiple levels. The book is currently available for purchase at the Apple iBookstore, and is at its best on an iPad.

The Creators Project spoke with BFFA3AE about their process and latest project. Read all about AD BOOK below, and the first five people to email us at editor@thecreatorsproject.com will win a free AD BOOK promo code! Make sure to put “BFFA3AE AD BOOK” in the subject line.

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The Creators Project: You’ve been exploring the ways the internet affects culture since 2007 on your blog, but have since expanded to include film, performance, and installation art. What led you to diversify your endeavors?
Daniel: When we first started making art in 2007, we were interested in what was happening online with surf clubs. It was a way of having a conversation where each post, while seemingly obliquely cobbled together, somehow spoke to the post before and after it. The dialogue produced was a mix between an investment in Internet culture and an examination of it at the same time. We were interested in not only partaking in such a community, but also the way in which this community (and the sociality connected to it) affected our physical lives. Naturally, this lead us to explore these ideas beyond the limits of a browser interface. Also, the three of us met in film school, so we already had a practice that existed beyond the Internet and it was only a matter of time until we started to merge the two.

Can you describe your approach to net art? How has it evolved since 2007 when you guys first started out?
Mica:I'd like to answer this Q with these stamps I collected from deviantART while trying to solicit a cover artist for Badlands' upcoming romance novel. I think the following do a good job of representing our hanging out since 2007. Some of these are just things we have to live with (ie. glasses) but has probably impacted our work more than you know.

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Whatever we care about atm is what we've always made art about. That's still true today except there's different content we like to think about. Most recently our topic of interest was Selena Gomez's online/offline relationship with Demi Lovato that we expressed through customized stickers at 247365 Gallery.

It's almost difficult to separate net art from net-reality in some cases, is this the point? Do you feel like this is the point?
Matt: I guess a lot of our work has been based around bringing online aspects into a more physical/tangible form, or reality as you say. I think it's interesting that AD BOOK is easily held. I don't know if I'd call it the point but it's definitely a point.

I take BFFA3AE's art to be meta-net-art… do you agree?
Daniel: Yes.

How do you want your audience to interact with pieces like AD BOOK?
Mica: Definitely you should zoom (pretty nice retina display on iPad). Wait for the GIFs to load. Browse it, screencap it, hack it, any suggestions we are down for. The book is for anyone by anyone.

AD BOOK is totally genre-bending, do you consider it an installation? An exhibition in which BFFA3AE are the curators?
Matt: I usually refer to AD BOOK as a project as opposed to a show or exhibition. I think curators (or maybe organizers?) is still an appropriate label for us here, but there's also a vagueness as to our role vs. the contributors' role that I find interesting, like where does our part end and their part begin?
Mica: Purchase the book to find out!

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Can you tell me more about the collaboration process that's going into the making of AD BOOK— What’s been your criteria for the artists you’ve selected thus far? Is it just like the advertising system that dominates the internet in that it's only based on the willingness of the advertiser to pay a fee?
Matt: We started with a pretty basic open call that proliferated through different networks, stemming from our own. We were not directly involved with the creation of any ad, but since the majority were made specifically for us/the book, I'd like to think the context we set up for each artist played some small part in their creation.

How do you feel about online advertising, and advertising in general? Why do you feel it's something worthy of consideration and artistic output?
Mica: Everyone does it, is how I feel about advertising. Apple is a pretty great advertiser. People are buying stuff at the Apple Store nonstop (so many software updates). Everytime I'm there I take a Photo Booth pic. I like to advertise in the advertisement. I try to output something daily (Instagram, Twitter, Vine) which is basically advertising stuff I like and like to think about. What is your art if it isn't stuff you are advertising?

Why did you choose to use a reader platform?
Matt: We all have a history growing up with media in different forms to the extent that our frame of mind changes from medium to medium, and we wanted to tap into that subconscious context someone would be in while using a reader platform vs. something different.
Mica: We thought if we were going to make a book we wanted it to be a book we didn't have to really make. It takes people years to make a book and ain't nobody got time for that. The idea of AD BOOK felt enticing because it became about everybody else. Also e-books make reading more web-like. You don't read it like a book. You browse. Open up to any page. Stay on the page that feels good. You read it as a creative act. It's supposed to feel like how we see art today. And now it's a published experience.

It's great that the ad for AD BOOK submissions even fulfills some of the expectations of advertising found in the dark corners of the interweb, like that .zip file that's instantly downloaded to my computer. In what other ways have you programmed AD BOOK to sort of assault you like other forms of internet advertising?
Mica: GIFs make assault very possible.

What are your thoughts on Justin Bieber?
Mica: I'm a bielieber.
Dan: I'm Team Selena.
Matt: ?idk i fl weird.

@MlleDisser