Digital Narrative

Net art is an extremely versatile medium, in which the author has great control over content, display method, and relationship with the viewer. By analyzing the work of women such as Shelly Jackson, Adrienne Eisen, Tina Laporta, and Donna Leischman, we can take a close look at how these choices are applied.

            Shelly Jackson’s My Body starts out as a graphic piece. Her white sketch of a body on a black background is very reminiscent of an x-ray. The “windows” used to surround highlighted appendages adds to this illusion. By clicking on said “window,” the hypertext engages the viewer into a diary environment. Each body part has its own individual entry, and within each entry are more hyperlinks that will take you to another entry. In this manner, Jackson creates a seemingly endless amount of entries. Other than its initial illustration, this piece acts mostly as a work of literature.

            Six Sex Scenes, by Adrienne Eisen, is entirely a digital diary. There is an overwhelming amount of entries surrounding Eisen’s life, with emphasis on the relationship with her boyfriend Andy and doubts about her own heterosexuality. To assume this autobiographical would be foolish, especially since there is such a sarcastic, sardonic, and comedic undertone to most of her entries. I found her linking strategy to be very engaging, as no page contained the same links. There was no order to the entries and it allowed the viewer to move through them at random, never following an ongoing theme (at least not in any particular order).

            An early C.U.C.ME. piece done by Tina Laporta is titled Distance. She links a visual and textual narrative through a linear form. This locks the viewer into one story, which she has complete control over (unlike Jackson & Eisen). To me, her work seemed like a foreshadowing of  ChatRoulette, in which the viewer can only click forward to the net vid chat window. Her theme also resonates with ChatRoulette, as the users log on to achieve that sense of intimacy, leaving traces on screens, but also so distant from the interaction. This piece seemed very close to autobiographical, as Laporta must have experienced these emotions, but by using the word “she,” the “I” factor is lost.

            Donna Leishman’s Red Riding Hood was my least favorite of this weeks discussion. While her visuals were engaging, the story presented empty options. You want to click the other windows but you can’t. Even when she asks “Let Red Dream” or “Wake Her Up,” the only hyperlink that works is waking her up. I was able to find a secret diary of hers within the work, but it was far from worth the effort it took to find. Her work reminded me of a program I used in elementary school called “HyperStudios,” which involved creating graphic scenes with embedded buttons used to progress the story. 

BUSH AND BENJAMIN

In a 1945 Atlantic article, titled “As We May Think, “ Vannevar Bush theorizes about the future of technology. He notes that “Had a Pharaoh been given detailed and explicit designs of an automobile, and had he understood them completely, it would have taxed the resources of his kingdom to have fashioned the thousands of parts for a single car, and that car would have broken down on the first trip to Giza.” This is the perfect preface to his article, as Bush can see where mechanical advancement will take us, but cannot fully comprehend how we will get there.

While exploring the implications of 1940’s photography, Bush brings up possible innovations such as helmet cameras and even digital cameras, allowing one to snap and look at pictures immediately with no wet processing. Bush then speaks to an early voice generation machine called Voder. He develops this early advancement into what will become talking text and digital voice recorders. Most interestingly, Bush creates the basic concept for the modern day computer and the internet, which he calls Memex. “It consists of a desk, and while it can presumably be operated from a distance, it is primarily the piece of furniture at which he works. On the top are slanting translucent screens, on which material can be projected for convenient reading. There is a keyboard, and sets of buttons and levers. Otherwise it looks like an ordinary desk.”

In “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” Walter Benjamin discusses the effects of recreating artistic works. His main thesis revolves around the producability of art evolving into the mass producability of art due to advancements in photography. Benjamin has some concern with the authenticity of art, and the ever-swaying balance of exhibition and cult value. With the reproduction capabilities provided by photography, “exhibition value begins to displace cult value all along the line. But cult value does not give way without resistance. It retires into an ultimate retrenchment: the human countenance.” In this sense, art appears to lose its aura; however it extends the ability to deliver art to the viewer’s situation. This is especially true with film. Certainly Forrest Gump does not lose its aura whether viewed live on set, the original 16mm film, VHS, DVD, or even BluRay. It could even be argued that viewing it on BluRay would increase its aura in comparison to the original setting.

These articles apply to the conversations we will be having in HATODA due to their application of internet like concepts. While Bush had incredible premonitions of technologic advancements, Benjamin speaks to the implications of such machines. There is much dispute regarding the “benefits” of a cyber culture and its effects on the authenticity of art.