Been to the Happy Accidents Cybergallery?

Nick Brown was tired of reading art criticism written by cranky critics and visiting galleries run for insiders. So the recent UBC graduate started Happy Accidents. Inspired by Australia's massively popular Design is Kinky, he designed Accidents as a kind of virtual art gallery and zine.

The most recent issue features a t-shirt designer, urban photographer, graffiti artist and scrapbook creator. Brown and the Happy Accidents crew only chose the first, Rob Kronbauer.

That's because, by design, Brown has very little say in it. It's run like those Choose Your Own Adventure books you read as a kid. Except lots of people choose the adventure. Brown chooses one artist, then that artist chooses the next one, and so on.

"As much as people try to make things really calculated, the best stuff always seems to be, at least, a little bit by accident," says Brown, formerly of Vancouver's now-defunct Misanthropy Gallery.

Untouchable

That's not the only difference between Accidents and other galleries. Accidents does not sell artwork (though it does hawk a bit of swag) nor does it exist specifically to promote the artists' work. Rather, the site features art that traditional galleries probably wouldn't touch.

Case in point, a t-shirt with a sketch of aerosol cans and the subtext "the stuff you huff" by Bob Kronbauer. Or Marco Cibola's 40's-inspired poster of a pittbull as a U.S. Marine. Or the floor-to-ceiling graffiti-styled gallery walls painted by Fighting.

When not exhibiting on the site, the Accidents artists illustrate children's books, decorate glossy pages like those of Harpers and Nuvo, and contribute to advertising campaigns for products like Sprite. The site is chock-full of articles on and interviews with and by these featured artists. And the artists frequently update Accidents' blog.

Anti-academe

"The Internet is the number one source of shit-talking," says Brown. "This is, hopefully, a little refreshing."

Brown started the site at the beginning of this year, while still completing his degree in art history and English literature at UBC. As anyone who has worked on a website can attest, they are complicated, time-gobbling beasts. Still, Brown dedicates his time, money and energy to celebrating other people's work because, well, it makes him feel good.

"I spend all day looking at good stuff and trying to pick holes in it," he says of his time in academia. "I feel this site is a chance for me to filter out all the really negative, critical side of things and say nice things. It doesn't mean I only have nice things to say, but the site is my chance to talk about things that excite me."

Illumination

In theory, displaying art on the Internet makes it more accessible than even that in a public gallery. The audience need not be in any one place at any certain time, all they need is Internet access. But, as Tamara Neely, co-founder and former publisher of Ripe Magazine discovered, it isn't always easy.

"Accessibility has a lot to do with how comfortable people are with computers," says Neely, who launched Ripe solely online. Making your presence known in cyberspace, she says, depends largely on marketing.

"Just because something is up doesn't mean people will find it," she says.

Ripe, which is now available in print, features a lot of photography, one type of art that often looks better illuminated from behind, as it would be on a computer screen.

Real virtuality

This is where the Internet takes a sharp turn from "real world" art galleries. It does not have white walls as fresh and clean as an unused bar of soap. Displaying art online changes the way it is viewed depending on the size, clarity and brightness of the screen.

"The Problematics of Collecting and Display, Part 1," from The Art Bulletin, says the way in which a piece is displayed affects the way it is interpreted.

"Since the selection and configuration of individual objects not only transform the space surrounding them, but the objects themselves are also transformed by the very environment they create, this reciprocal effect can indeed be more than subtly manipulated."

Web pages beg to be toyed with more than subtly. In Accidents, many pieces are cropped, surrounded with other images, or loaded with print. In other words, virtually drenched in design. The difference between design and art is subtle - design is meant to be useful, whereas art does not have to be.

Where do you fall?

"Happy Accidents is a locus for that convergence," says Brown. "We're sitting right there in the middle because it's a pretty design-heavy site, but our preoccupation is really visual art."

"It lies outside the purpose of either one of them to discuss where they fall," says Niall McClelland, one half of the Fighting collective. "Day to day it doesn't come into play. I don't sit there and think is this design or is this art?"

Ultimately, Brown and McClelland agree the distinction is useless; it's only important to people who benefit from it.

"If you are a curator at a gallery and you are horrified by how much design is imposing itself on the art world, you have to ask yourself, how much you have to gain or lose by those distinctions," says Brown. "We are happy to play with these boundaries and not take them too seriously. This is not a holy thing."

Lowbrow highbrow

Similarly, neither Brown nor McLelland is concerned with the debate between whether highbrow or lowbrow art has more merit. Most of the pieces on Accidents would fall into the lowbrow category. But McClelland says he could care less that some of the work is inspired by popular culture.

"A lot of what's influenced people is not found in art galleries or art history class," says McClelland, who graduated from Emily Carr Institute.

"A lot of contemporary art is based outside of that, a lot of that is commercial stuff," he says. McClelland says his work, and that of the other artists on Accidents, is more involved than that done for commercial reasons. "It's not dumbed down."

And, though only a sailor's website would have more cursing, Happy Accidents isn't dumbed down either. It's just blissfully haphazard.

Kelsey Dundon is a writer based in Vancouver.