Mark Napier, 1998
Shredder serves to show a user what a virtual version of a paper shredder might entail. It turns the familiar into abstracted shards of it’s former self, just enough to tell what it once was. It reveals what is hidden behind the sleek façade of every carefully coded website. The site was created in 1998, when the internet was still in its infancy to challenge how people thought about the net and what can be found on it. Normally, every browser interprets URLs the same, but Mark Napier sought to challenge what would happen if a browser read things differently. Because it works with any URL the user can input different sites of personal meaning into it and explore what Shredder puts out. In the tradition of Duchamp’s readymades and similar abstract pieces, Shredder proposes if the everyday can become “art” if placed in a different context or are slightly altered. The output of Shredder is the same as any browser just in a different form, all the same elements and images are present. The piece situates itself as an evolution or mutation of the avant-garde art movement of the past and proposes what a modern iteration might look like.