nonsite

When I was at the AGO in Toronto in December, I saw a Robert Smithson Nonsite from their permanent collection that they had up on exhibition. It had the map with the location noted and a zig-zag box with the earth from the site.

Smithson saw the nonsite as an indoor earthwork, the map was a ‘landmarker’. He chose remote, unpopulated sites and materials from these locations were brought into the gallery. Nonsites relate to Smithson’s research into site, displacement and location.

Smithson writes about these sites: “I began in a very primitive way;..started taking trips in 1965; certain sites would appeal to me more–sites that had been in some way disrupted…pulverized. I was really looking for a denaturalization rather than built up scenic beauty…when you take a trip you need precise data & I would often use quadrangle maps; mapping followed traveling”

In contast Marc Augé writes about Non-Places: sites of excess- train stations, freeways, supermarkets, airports; places where people are in transit. Non-places are evidence of a supermodern world of acceleration, speed and excess. He writes about the problem of the overabundance of information and events that have overtaken our lives. Augé’s non-places are intermediate, overwhelming sites of information overload.

I’m considering these ideas of Smithson and Augé in relation to websites: in what way are websites nonsites or perhaps more appropriately: non-places?