Exciting pieces of net art and e-lit from the 90's that are still relevant today (Digital Fiction - Blog Post 4)

I really loved Tina LaPorta’s piece, “Distance,” because I felt like these are the same questions we still ask ourselves about online relationships and connections in 2019. I mean how many memes have you seen about kids who have a hard time with face-to-face communication because so much of their time and education is spent attached to a screen and communicating with a personality mediated through that screen?

One thing I found particularly interesting was the really personal text compared with the massive variety of stranger’s pictures in the black and white screen shots. As the faces in the pictures constantly change, you can feel a lot of tension from the narrator, whose loneliness and need of connection deepens with every new interaction. I love that the pictures helped add depth to the words and convey a sense of alienation even as the voice of the piece became so urgent. I think maybe that’s what Mark (my instructor, hi, Mark!) means when he talks about intermedia existing in-between media. Without the pictures, we’d still have a story, but it wouldn’t be the same story, without the photos attached. I don’t think that is the case for a multi-media piece. Anyway, so this one was lovely and it’s quick so definitely have a look at it, my lovelies!

Moving on,

YHCHANG Heavy Industries: “Dakota”  Can we say fecking WEIRD? So this is just me trying to make some sense of this thing, but we’ve got black words on a white screen that change at different intervals of the story, and all the while we’ve got some intense drumming in the background, and at times some tribal chanting (which was way way distracting). Because the pace of this thing was so intense and couldn’t be controlled by the viewer/reader, I had to watch it like three times and wait for certain spots to make sure I wasn’t missing anything. One thing I found really interesting about this piece was that the narrative seems to get more fragmented and non-linear as the piece progresses. At first, it’s just a dude and his buddies who seem to be gang-bangers obsessed with drinking and peeing on things (and Elvis) but then the narrative gets harder and harder to follow. Someone dies. Someone hasn’t been laid. Someone’s mom won’t leave him alone. Etc. Even after a couple of watches and trying to pause to catch certain screens, I still feel lost by the end, which might have been the point, to overwhelm the reader and bring them into the narrator’s subconscious, in which he feels increasingly overwhelmed and lost. Or something? That’s all I’ve got for this one.

My buddy @Jen covered Yael Kanarek’s: “World of Awe” and Judd Morrissey’s: “TheJew's Daughter” really extensively, so I’m going to skip those two here, but I generally agree with her consensus and share her confusion as to why one is considered “net art” and why one is considered “e-lit.”

Olia Lialina’s: “My Boyfriend Came Back From the War” was a very abstract piece that required a lot of thought and digging just to get some sort of story out. The piece is a mix of interactive narrative, which the reader/viewer has some control in, in terms of deciding where the narrative will go next, and random pictures, some of which move, that take you to new screens and new bits of narrative. I found this piece to be quite frustrating, because I had no idea what to click on and had to spend a lot of time rolling my mouse over the black screen to figure out what I needed to move to get to new parts of the narrative, or what I needed to click. Some of the art included was repetitive, so I found the piece to be quite boring after a while. I’m sure others won’t share my opinion, but I was really looking forward to this one because of the title and found myself quite grumpy at the complicated expectation of interaction and navigation. I suppose that was the point, to simulate what a soldier’s brain looks like when they come back from war, or to simulate the experience of trying to put your lover’s thoughts/stories/actions together when they come back from war. In that way, I found this to be very representative of that fragmentation. Maybe that’s why it triggered me so much. In any case, this is not a piece I’d recommend, if you’re trying to figure out what net art is all about!

Finally, Mendi and Keith Obadike’s: “Blackness for Sale” and “keeping upappearances” were especially interesting and fun to interact with. “Blacknessfor Sale,” resembles an Ebay “item for sale” page, but the description is the narrative of the author’s perception of his own blackness and the pros and cons of bidding on the item. When I first navigated to this page, I thought I’d make a mistake, but when I started reading through the item description, I became more and more engrossed in the page. I was especially interested in the fact that 12 people had bid on this item, and I wasn’t able to see who or what their comments were, though I’d have been very interested in reading that. I wonder if that was an intentional addition on the author’s part, or if that actually happened. In any case, while the words tell one narrative in this piece, what isn’t being said or can’t be clicked on I think is also a huge part of the story. I definitely recommend you check it out! “Keeping up appearances” is also an interesting piece, which also plays with invisible narratives in comparison with visible narratives. It tells the story of a young girl who befriends a powerful man she used to go to church with. The visible narrative, written in black, tells the story of a nice friendship between the narrator and a powerful man she befriends from her church. This story seems positive and uplifting, but when you hover the text over the invisible missing pieces of the story, another narrative emerges, much more sinister, of how the man manipulates and abuses the narrator. I found this piece to be incredibly powerful and relevant, especially because we are in the age of #metoo and #whyididntreport.

What I find most interesting and engaging about all these pieces, is that we were supposed to take a look at pieces of “older’ net art and e-lit this week, but each of the pieces we interacted with are still incredibly relevant today. So maybe something important I learned is that it isn’t enough to choose a technological platform that will still be accessible to future generations, you also have to find a narrative that will remain relatable and accessible to future audiences, and provide narrative paths that pull the reader in and make what they are reading a little bit of their own story. Super fascinating!

That’s about all I’ve got for now, my lovelies. Really enjoyed the reading this week and look forward to seeing you all again when I get back in town next week. In the meantime, hope you are all having a joyful week!

Until next time, hope you all have the most joyful week and I'm really looking forward to seeing you when I'm back in town next week!

😼😼~Bree😼😼