Net Art vs E-Lit
For this week, we were tasked with reading a bunch of early "net art" "exhibitions" (I still think the terminology when referring to such things is interesting -- they're not books, they're not games, they're kind of an in-between thing).
In particular, I thought the interface of Yael Kanarek's "World of Awe" was really cool. It's made to look like a slightly buggy old desktop, complete with drop-down menus that you use to navigate through/around/between the different text fragments:
Some of the pages are simply text to read, while others are descriptions of tools, complete with prices and where they were purchased, or locations. I'm torn about the effectiveness of this "exhibition," overall -- on the one hand, it drew me in and engaged me immediately, keeping me clicking around for a long time reading different fragments. On the other hand, though, the fragments were ultimately so disconnected as to prevent me from really getting invested in the story itself, leaving me more interested in the user interface and the idea of the piece than in the piece itself.
Still, as always, it was helpful in conceptualizing what I want to do for my own project. I like the idea of a fragmented narrative (e.g., how much I enjoyed "My Body" from a few weeks ago), but in such a way that, sooner rather than later, the reader is able to make connections and see how the fragments can fit together, to avoid that kind of "lost at sea" feeling some of the other pieces have given me.
And speaking of that "lost at sea" feeling, boy did Judd Morrissey's "The Jew's Daughter" deliver in spades. I loved the interactive nature of this one, where by mousing over a word, bits of the text change, so that the page you're reading is always in flux. But I couldn't make heads or tails of whether there was an underlying story happening, and ultimately that was where it lost me.
Keith Obadike's fake eBay page "Blackness for Sale" was another interesting interface as a way to tell a story or make a point (in this case, it's more of a societal commentary than a "story," per se). This reminded me of one of the pieces a classmate presented on this past week, myBALL, which takes the form of a '90s-era business website as a form of commentary on the rhetoric of commercial websites.
One of the questions posed to us this week was "Why is Yael Kanarek's 'World of Awe' considered part of the so-called "net art world" but Judd Morrissey's 'The Jew's Daughter' generally considered a work of e-lit?" I actually would love to know the answer to this. Both are examples of disjointed, non-linear narratives, and if anything it seemed like "World of Awe" had more of a narrative through-line than "The Jew's Daughter." Perhaps "World of Awe" is considered more art than lit because of its interface, which is less about the text and more about the overall experience, whereas "The Jew's Daughter" looks more like a conventional book page and is more focused on the text itself?
In particular, I thought the interface of Yael Kanarek's "World of Awe" was really cool. It's made to look like a slightly buggy old desktop, complete with drop-down menus that you use to navigate through/around/between the different text fragments:
 |
| Screenshot of Yael Kanarek's "World of Awe" |
Some of the pages are simply text to read, while others are descriptions of tools, complete with prices and where they were purchased, or locations. I'm torn about the effectiveness of this "exhibition," overall -- on the one hand, it drew me in and engaged me immediately, keeping me clicking around for a long time reading different fragments. On the other hand, though, the fragments were ultimately so disconnected as to prevent me from really getting invested in the story itself, leaving me more interested in the user interface and the idea of the piece than in the piece itself.
Still, as always, it was helpful in conceptualizing what I want to do for my own project. I like the idea of a fragmented narrative (e.g., how much I enjoyed "My Body" from a few weeks ago), but in such a way that, sooner rather than later, the reader is able to make connections and see how the fragments can fit together, to avoid that kind of "lost at sea" feeling some of the other pieces have given me.
 |
| Screenshots from Judd Morrissey's "The Jew's Daughter" |
And speaking of that "lost at sea" feeling, boy did Judd Morrissey's "The Jew's Daughter" deliver in spades. I loved the interactive nature of this one, where by mousing over a word, bits of the text change, so that the page you're reading is always in flux. But I couldn't make heads or tails of whether there was an underlying story happening, and ultimately that was where it lost me.
Keith Obadike's fake eBay page "Blackness for Sale" was another interesting interface as a way to tell a story or make a point (in this case, it's more of a societal commentary than a "story," per se). This reminded me of one of the pieces a classmate presented on this past week, myBALL, which takes the form of a '90s-era business website as a form of commentary on the rhetoric of commercial websites.
One of the questions posed to us this week was "Why is Yael Kanarek's 'World of Awe' considered part of the so-called "net art world" but Judd Morrissey's 'The Jew's Daughter' generally considered a work of e-lit?" I actually would love to know the answer to this. Both are examples of disjointed, non-linear narratives, and if anything it seemed like "World of Awe" had more of a narrative through-line than "The Jew's Daughter." Perhaps "World of Awe" is considered more art than lit because of its interface, which is less about the text and more about the overall experience, whereas "The Jew's Daughter" looks more like a conventional book page and is more focused on the text itself?
Comments
Post a Comment