Replacing web advertising with contemporary art

Check out Add-Art.  It’s an extension for the Firefox web browser (which if you aren’t using, you should be) that replaces most web advertising with images of contemporary art.  Here’s how the project is described on its site:

Add-Art is a Firefox extension which replaces advertising images on web pages with art images from a curated database.

It is a free and open source project, currently being developed at the Eyebeam Development site.

Of the 100+ add-ons available for Firefox, “adblockers” are the most popular. The most current, Adblock Plus, has over 18 million downloads (as of May 2008) since Jan 2006 (currently over 250,000/week). It’s predecessor, Adblock, has been downloaded over 8 million times. These extensions work by preventing advertising images from downloading and replacing the ads with blank space. Their popularity has risen as pop-up ads, banner ads, and ads incorporating sound and animation have permeated the internet.

For many, replacing ads with blank space would be enough. Add-Art attempts to do something more interesting than just blocking ads - it turns your browser into an art gallery. Every time you visit the New York Times online or check the weather you’ll also see a spattering of images by a young contemporary artist.

The project will be supported by an small website providing information on the current artists and curator, along with a schedule of past and upcoming Add-Art shows. Each 2 weeks will include 5-8 artists selected by emerging and established curators. Images will have to be cropped to standard banner sizes or can be custom made for the project. Artists can target sites (such as every ad on FoxNews.com) and/or default to any page on the internet with ads. One artist will be shown per page. The curatorial duty will be passed among curators through recommendations, word of mouth, and solicitations to the Add-Art site.

With the overwhelming popularity of adblockers, if Add-Art were to attract 5% of existing users, the numbers would be in the hundreds of thousands. Add-Art can bring contemporary art to the desktops of all types of people at home and in their workplace - all over the world.

Semi-random Note #1: Unfortunately it isn’t compatible with the latest version of Firefox (3.0.1), but they’re apparently working on a fix.  In the meantime, if you’ve got an earlier version, it’s definitely worth giving this extension a whirl.

Semi-random Note #2: There is some debate over the ethics of ad blockers like this.  Critics say that web publishers have a right to display ads and that advertisers have a right to have those ads displayed when they’ve paid for them.  There’s an undeniable logic to this view, and I suppose it could always be enforced in a web site’s terms of use.  However, on a practical level, I believe any efforts to fight this trend will prove futile and that publishers’ energies ought therefore be redirected towards creative solutions that don’t alienate their readers/audiences.  We’re living in a TiVO world.  Advertising had better be relevant and compelling if it expects to be tolerated.