{"id":1491,"date":"2026-03-04T23:10:46","date_gmt":"2026-03-04T23:10:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.motorhueso.net\/wuwei\/?p=1491"},"modified":"2026-03-04T23:10:46","modified_gmt":"2026-03-04T23:10:46","slug":"degenerative","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.motorhueso.net\/wuwei\/degenerative\/","title":{"rendered":"degenerative"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

degenerative: a web page that degenerates with each visit<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cevery time someone visits this page, one of the characters that make up the html code gets either deleted or replaced. this causes a step-by-step degeneration, not only of the page’s content, but also of its structure.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

these words could originally be read at the top of the degenerative web page<\/a>, a piece I programmed and launched in 2005. at that time, generative art had become quite popular, so coding a de-generative language art piece was my way of going against the grain, as i usually do. i was inspired by the work of artists who sought aesthetic pleasure in destruction, such as gustav metzger. in 1959, metzger published his auto-destructive art manifesto, encouraging artists to use perishable or unstable materials that would degrade naturally or through human intervention. through the progressive or immediate degradation of the artwork, his purpose was to parody what he saw as industrial societies\u2019 \u201cobsession with destruction.\u201d auto-destructive art was considered by metzger as a \u201cform of public art for industrial societies\u201d that aesthetically demonstrated the power of those societies to \u201caccelerate disintegrative processes\u201d (metzger 1959). pete townshend, co-founder and guitarist of the british band the who, was one of metzger\u2019s most famous students at the ealing art college in london. as you might recall, he mirrored his teacher\u2019s lessons by enthusiastically bashing his guitar at the end of the shows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

read more…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

a web page that degenerates with each visit (2005)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,5],"tags":[334,33,141,32,335,339,337,336,338,15],"class_list":["post-1491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-descargable","category-poema","tag-auto-destructive-art","tag-codigo","tag-degenerative","tag-ensayo","tag-gustav-metzger","tag-html","tag-instrucciones","tag-pete-townshend","tag-php","tag-poema","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorhueso.net\/wuwei\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1491","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorhueso.net\/wuwei\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorhueso.net\/wuwei\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorhueso.net\/wuwei\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorhueso.net\/wuwei\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1491"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorhueso.net\/wuwei\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1491\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1492,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorhueso.net\/wuwei\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1491\/revisions\/1492"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorhueso.net\/wuwei\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorhueso.net\/wuwei\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorhueso.net\/wuwei\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}