And it struck me that we seem to have a genuine meme going here: the notion of "Instant Art". I'm not exactly sure when this started -- the first major incarnations I really became aware of were Iron Chef and the 24 Hour Comic initiative, but the basic idea certainly goes back further. (Offhand, there's Harlan Ellison's Chocolate Alphabet; I don't know what further precursors there are.) But from Junkyard Wars to Iron Artist, it does seem to be an idea whose time has come.
Is this a simple fad, an expression of the current zeitgeist of "Hurry, Hurry", or a lasting new idea in art? It does seem to have value: the people who do the 24 Hour Comics seem to mostly feel that it's a useful creative exercise. That's likely to keep the concept around for a long time. What I'm less sure about is whether the idea of this phenomenon being entertainment in and of itself has legs, or whether it will fade in a few years...
