Like a gallery, each of these sites is crafted to sell the work or gained future commissioned work. That means that like a gallery, each site tries its best to create a beautiful environment for the work it is promoting. The result can be an amazing introduction to an artist that might have escaped your radar, or better yet access to some excellent art even if you aren’t living in a major city.

A great place to get started on your search is Smashing Magazine, an online designer’s magazine that regularly showcases portfolio websites. The post 35 Beautiful Photography Websites is a good collection to start with, but warning: you may find yourself browsing a little too long!

TheSixtyOne.com does something innovative with some very old ideas.

The buzzword of Generation Y is “social,” and it’s not referring to quaint get-togethers involving ice cream sundaes. Music in particular has a rich history of being a very social art form, from its beginnings in public performance to the recent decades’ obsession with mix tapes. Translating this to the social networking paradigm that has emerged with “Web 2.0″ has become a chief concern to the music industry.

Enter TheSixtyOne.com, which harnesses the power of social networking while incorporating the more primal human need for shared artistic experience and critique. TheSixtyOne allows its artists to set up sites that provide free streaming music for an audience of listeners competing to prove their taste. Listeners vote for their favorite artists, and if a listener’s choice jumps in popularity the listener is rewarded with more points and a level boost. The way Digg users strive to become tastemakers in the community surrounding that site, TheSixtyOne listeners embark in a friendly competition to prove their credibility as music listeners.

The result is more exposure for unknown artists because users want to be exposed to new work that might be the next best trend. New artists are featured at the top of the network’s browsing page, guaranteeing dozens of views, views which can rise into the hundreds or thousands if the artist has some talent and a likable sound.

One interesting problem arising with TheSixtyOne is the introduction of mainstream acts which draw attention away from the independent artists the site tries to serve. Still, the top artists are largely unknown bands and solo acts that appeal to an audience looking to discover the next big thing.

There is a need in the music community to prove one’s merits as a listener and critic, something which I think makes this sort of site perfect for music consumption. I wonder if the same concept would translate well for video, photography, art, or literature. The desire for “taste cred” certainly exists in these communities, but not quite as strong as it does in the trend-obsessed world of music entertainment.

This raised the question: can public art exist on the internet? If we look at the world of digital art, is it impossible to capture the randomness of audience that is captured by the sculpture at the intersection that everyone must drive past? In this post, I’m taking a look at three examples of online art that I think attempt this sort of spontaneity of viewership that occurs in tradition public art.

The Google Logo

It’s easy to argue that Google, as the most widely used search engine in the U.S., is the main street of the internet. Almost everyone who conducts their business on the internet will log onto Google for a search – probably several times a day. That makes the company’s practice of changing its logo for special occasions an interesting instance of public art.

Over the past few years, the Google logo has been transformed several times to reflect an artistic style or incorporate the iconic images of important events in the history of art, science, and pop culture. While some of these incarnations have been a bit more silly than “artistic” – such as the cartoonish Martians that adorned the logo on Percival Lowell’s birthday – there have also been allusions to artists and illustrators such as the recent Norman Rockwell-esque tribute to Veteran’s Day. The result is a demonstration of art to unsuspecting site visitors, the pedestrians of the web.

What makes this display particularly interesting is that Google incorporates a feature unique to the internet: it links these logos to a Google search related to the altered logo’s theme. The result? An interactive version of those plaques you see next to a public exhibit in the train station. Not only is the visitor visually introduced to the art, he is given an informational introduction to the concepts it embodies. Furthermore, instead of a didactic plaque, he is offered a tool for immediate personal research – and in a post-Twitter society with increasingly shorter attention spans, this immediacy is vital.

The Bing Front Page

Like with most aspects of Bing, the brand new search engine derives its front page art from Google and expands upon it. Its creators introduce additional interactivity by accompanying it’s ever-changing large photo backgrounds with click-able hot spots. The hot spots feature questions related to the photo’s content and links to resources for answers. While Google’s stripped-down functionality gives the page visitor more independence to conduct their own research, Bing offers a more controlled digital exhibit while still offering the sort of interactivity only the internet can provide.

The MTV Homepage

The MTV homepage may not offer the infinite informational resources that Google and Bing do, it takes advantage of web technology by featuring a different illustration with every page reload. No information is provided about the individual illustrators, but a visitor can experience a variety of artwork relatively unrelated to their task at hand (finding information about music trends), often seeing several works in a single visit. It would be interesting to see this rotating background concept be used to feature the artists themselves or have the sort of interactivity seen in the above examples.