# Surf Club (サーフ・クラブ)

> A movement that made the collaborative blog itself the site of the work. Nasty Nets, founded in 2006 by John Michael Boling, Joel Holmberg, Guthrie Lonergan, Marisa Olson and others, was the first to popularize the term surf club, and other collectives took the label up. It grew out of link sharing on del.icio.us, so found images, screenshots of searches and targeted ads pile up in date order inside a default blog template.

- IndexStyle No.540 — https://indexstyle.org/styles/surf-club
- Kind: Style · Family: Digital Art · Era: 2006–2012
- Mood: Play, Rebellion, Nostalgia
- Color cues: #FFFFFF / #0000EE / #CCCCCC (cues taken from reference works, not a fixed palette)

## Defining characteristics

- A default blog template left alone, with posts stacking in date order and no design applied
- Screenshots of web searches, targeted ads and stock gradients posted as found
- Posts answering other posts, so the same image returns altered by another member
- Amateur material sitting in the same column as work, with nothing marking the difference

## Best used for

- Showing what the late 2000s web felt like through a run of images left exactly as found
- Running a project where the shared posting space is the work, and holding the line against tidying it

## Composition recipe

- Typography & lettering: Do not choose a typeface. Leaving the default in place is part of the meaning, and replacing it makes something else.
- Layout & structure: One vertical column in date order. No editing and no curation, just the order things were posted in.
- Material & texture: Leave found material as found. Keep the compression artefacts, the low resolution and the stock gradients.

## What to avoid

Cleaning up the found material and arranging it well removes the found state that the style is actually made of, leaving only collage.

## Application checklist

Before calling a piece an application of this style, check it against the defining characteristics:

- [ ] A default blog template left alone, with posts stacking in date order and no design applied
- [ ] Screenshots of web searches, targeted ads and stock gradients posted as found
- [ ] Posts answering other posts, so the same image returns altered by another member
- [ ] Amateur material sitting in the same column as work, with nothing marking the difference
- [ ] At least one reference work below has been studied directly
- [ ] The caution above ("What to avoid") has been addressed

## Related styles

- **Net.art (ネット・アート)** — Treats the browser, the link, the transmission error and the network itself as both the material and the site of the work. → https://indexstyle.org/styles/net-art
- **Glitch (グリッチ)** — Refuses to hide error and corruption, exposing the fragility of the digital medium itself. → https://indexstyle.org/styles/glitch

## Further study

- Rhizome の Net Art Anthology にある Nasty Nets の再構成アーカイブ
- Paul Slocum がまとめた Catalog of Internet Artist Clubs
- リンク共有の場から共同ブログへ移った経緯と、そこに集まった作り手の顔ぶれ

## Reference works

- Rhizome (New Museum) Net Art Anthology — Nasty Nets — https://anthology.rhizome.org/nasty-nets

## Source of record

- Rhizome (New Museum) Net Art Anthology — Nasty Nets — https://anthology.rhizome.org/nasty-nets

## Machine surfaces

- JSON: https://indexstyle.org/api/styles/surf-club
- Image-generation prompt (legally clean): https://indexstyle.org/styles/surf-club/prompt.txt
- MCP: https://indexstyle.org/mcp (tools: search_styles, get_style, compose_styles; prompts: image-prompt, apply-style)