ArtSEENsoHo SoHo nEw YOrk CiTy

artseensoho was developed and launched in the exciting early years of the world wide web. The concept proved to be ahead of its time: explore a vibrant neighborhood, visit art galleries and shops, wander and discover along the way. Ten years before the launch of Google Maps, artseensoho approached this goal using only graphic elements and photography, HTML and JavaScript.

During the development of artseensoho very few of the stores, restaurants or galleries of Soho knew what a website was! Convincing them they needed something they didn't understand proved tiresome, and the project was shelved after a four year run. The site is as it was in 1999, tables,frames and all. It has become a kind of time capsule of the web before templates and mobile scrolling design limitations.

The internal links to art exhibitions and street views remain viable and working. The same cannot be said for many of the links to outside art projects and more than a few retail and restaurant sites, which are now dead ends.

This home page (circa 1999) is now a tiny rectangle on our current high definition monitors, but it filled the desktop screens of its day. It is structurally a very detailed graphic interface that was built on sound fundamentals - it works today exactly as it did then.

The limited bandwidth of dial-up connectivity meant that the photographs could not be displayed at anywhere near the size we've become accustomed to, and this is unfortunate because artseensoho blazed a trail for the casual style of exhibition photography that followed both online and in print, a style that takes pains to include anonymous viewers wandering the gallery spaces looking at the art.

We remain proud of the many awards artseensoho gathered, among them USA Today Hot Site; Wired Magazine Spotlight; Rockport Press, Best of the Web - Navigation; and Communication Arts Web Site of the Week. So go exploring, and, if you're lucky, you'll get lost in a good way.