* * * * [four stars]

Durational website. Grief, longing, slowness, star scapes, valediction. * * * * [four stars] was originally added a month at a time over the course of 1998. Although it appears unbelievable now, in our current age of commercial website selling, this work was at the cutting edge of web exploration and presented 12 experimental uses of the web page, over 12 months. The long, continuous line was an innovative use of the space and illustrated, when given access to the 'machine', what an artist might do (think how an art practitioner might currently use Ais). It also presented a bridge between the personally exposing material of my performance period and the more muted, distanced, elemental work of my digital output 1998–2006. * * * * [four stars] starts in January 2008 with 30 men's names, friends and colleagues, set into a heavenly constellation and ends, 12 months later, in December 2008, with 31 names of my influences, also in a star map, and so encapsulates my own journey in this year from the vulnerability of my queer performance years, towards the technical and Zen distance of my computer works. I note here a small but important paragraph in my book How To Be An Artist (2009): 'Interestingly one artist told me that the problems generated in her social circumstances were because she had naïvely believed that in her art she could work through the life issues that she needed to address. I was surprised because in her performances she seemed to be doing just that. Strong, empowered, bold, radical – her practice tackled social and racial inequality. I was shocked when she told me that she’d hit a brick wall when she realised that her art wasn’t really processing these issues. It was only dealing with them on a surface level.' Much of my early performance work was a kind of timed, graded exposure. Can the audience take it? Will they laugh – at me, with me, or both? Can I survive the experience intact? I now see these digital works, with their calm, neutral exterior and objective, philosophical stance – as a recovery phase, a soothing recompense from the high stakes of the performance years. I would never return to the self-revelation style of my previous work (I lost most of my performance audience this way). Instead, many of these digital works represent an older energy of mine, going further back, to a younger me (school Computer Club), a teenage self that feels authentic, real. Here's an extract from my provocation (commissioned by Jonathan Meth) that I made at the Writernet 'Challenging Language' symposium on 23/1/99 which gives some indication of my then relationship to theatre: 'Michael Atavar (known for his work on the Internet) read from a text which envisaged a world where there was no theatre; thank God; just the artist, and (net) server; no middle man; no curators, no National; no RSC, no producers. Where there was sound and light, and movement and text; an integrated language without boundaries. Where there was no Mozart, no monoliths; no page, no pencil, no ink…Atavar's presentation of an (envisaged) world was one in which a global culture was ever changing, never static. In conclusion, he signed off: www.atavar.com.' It sounds fascinating…sadly this full text is no longer searchable in my archive. * * * * [four stars] won a best-of award in the internet-forum at the COMTEC 98 Festival of Computer Art in Dresden and also a runner-up prize in the 1999 trAce/Alt-X International Hypertext Competition. The work was shown at a variety of online exhibitions: Through the Looking Glass – Digital Creativity At The Turn of the Millennium, Pixelated Performance, File, CYNETart, Sonar. [The photograph, from the * * * * [four stars] postcard, was taken on the ArtsAdmin roof.] ATTC-Minus 14: Michael Atavar for Psopo Bubble Supported: Arts Council England Website: Programming by Mary Agnes Krell, Todd Reidy. Audio files by Neil Robinson. Digital animations by Julian Baker Photography: Hugo Glendinning Graphic reconstructions: Richard Scarborough