Stories

Shelley Jackson's My Body allows the participant (hence it's very interactive nature) to navigate through her stories of life and about her body parts through a menu drawing of "her body." Her stories seem to mostly center on coming of age and connect childhood experience with body part analysis, all with a playful tone. The site is very engaging since you choose your own paths and sequences of stories. Every page I went through of her piece, it seemed to me that her stories could be believable as true. Though whether the stories are fictional or not, Jackson conveys them in a way that makes them read as autobiographical.
Donna Leishman’s Ridinghood is a darker telling of the Little Red Riding hood story. While not as interactive as Jackson’s piece, considering there are usually only one or two options to navigate through the spaces, it allows for viewer involvement in the order of the story. I find the strange twist Leishman put on the children’s story to be telling of contemporary relationships, adding more risk and feeling. Thinking back to the children’s story, it is absolutely a creepy story, yet is told in a lighter way and does not give off a creepy vibe as to foretell the ending. Leishman’s piece makes the viewer feel like something is really off from the beginning and is more true to the nature of what happens in Little Red Riding hood than the original children’s story. The vibe I was getting from her piece reminds me of an EXTREMELY creepy online flash video series called Salad Fingers. I have only seen episode one of that series so far but the underlying creepy vibe is there, however I have heard that Salad Fingers gets extremely vulgar farther into the episodes.
Tina Laporta’s Distance explores online interaction through manipulation of webcam stills set with text below. An interesting point in the piece is where she asks, “Is technology a veil?” a question I have often thought about. When thinking back to times before the abundance of technology we currently find commonplace, social interaction was much more raw. When you needed something from a friend, you knocked on their door. Face to face interaction is lessened so much by technology now that one can live for years really without communication in person. No family dinners, online ordering systems from Domino’s. No coming to call on a neighbor, calling their cell. No sending letters, sending texts. No meeting a boyfriend at work, chatting with men through webcam on the Internet. So yes, in a huge way, technology is certainly a veil. What has been devoted to social interaction over the Internet with sites such as Second Life is absolutely amazing. People who are uncomfortable socially in person extend themselves out into the online society, finding interaction with comfort. The computer acts as an intermediary between insecurities and communicative connections. Another question Laporta brings, “is the virtual, real?” Such a question has so many arguments for and against, yet I seem to settle on, yes, it is real, it creates feelings and memories and experiences within people just like reality. However I also think there is such a difference, better or worse between virtual interaction and living life simply without technological interfaces doing the talking.

Online References:

Shelley Jackson's MY BODY
http://www.altx.com/thebody

Donna Leischman's redridinghood
http://www.6amhoover.com/redriding/red.htm

Tina Laporta's DISTANCE
http://www.turbulence.org/Works/Distance/

Salad Fingers
http://www.fat-pie.com/salad.htm

Second Life
www.secondlife.com

Benjamin & Bush Essays

In his essay, Benjamin notes, “that which withers in the age of mechanical reproduction is the aura of the work of art” (Benjamin, 3). He discusses how original art pieces are deep rooted in tradition, are unique, create a feeling of experience when viewed. He compares that with photography and film, the idea of reproducibility is challenged, considering the idea of the true original is less relevant. With photography, the art is made from negatives, and the desire to preserve an original, or first copy, is lost. When applying these ideas to our current digital advancements, the same ideas hold validity. For example, with net art, the desire for an “original” copy is an impossible concept. Art for the web is created entirely as a mass expression. With reproduction of more traditional forms, such as painting, the work was created as a singular expression, losing value when distributed in copy form. When art is created for mass distribution, the effect of reproduction changes from a negative impact to the central point and effort of the work itself. A section of the essay that seems to outline current thought quite well states, “Namely, the desire of contemporary masses to bring things ‘closer’ spatially and humanly, which is just as ardent as their bent toward overcoming the uniqueness of every reality by accepting its reproduction. Every day the urge grows stronger to get hold of an object at very close range by ways of its likeness, its reproduction” (Benjamin 4). This rings very true when looking at the digital age we are in. Our avenues of digital communication and network of representation of art such as sites of the Flickr type, both construct a community and fuel reproduction of art through sharing work. The old days of scoffing at and finding reproductions worthless are far-gone when looking at what is going on in the digital world. It can be said that what people desire in this age are reproductions themselves. Benjamin notes that the total function of art is reversed with photography and film. Another portion of the essay that I found significant is where Benjamin notes, “With emancipation of the various art practices from ritual go increasing opportunities for the exhibition of their products. It is easier to exhibit a portrait bust that can be sent here and there than to exhibit the statue of a divinity that has its fixed place in the interior of a temple” (Benjamin 5). Here, he is touching on the very beginning of the concept in the art world that has run rampant in our technological world. Size matters. The push for everything to be smaller and smaller and more mobile and accessible can easily be seen in technology. Value on smaller technological objects is also clear through the high prices that come with such materials. This transition to experimentation with smaller objects in art is apparent with the digital age, considering the actual materials do not exist beyond Internet space. It is amazing to me that there was a time where photography was challenged and scrutinized out of being an actual art form and we have made such progress from that time to the point where digital art, non-existent in any material form, is thought a true art form.

After reading Vannevar Bush’s essay, one of the most striking concepts he offered is that in his time, our ability to hold our race’s vast history and knowledge had become obsolete, warranting a huge necessity for technological advancement. He talks about the indexing system in libraries and the copious amount of information and scholarly work rendered pointless due to its inaccessibility. He describes his ideas for a system that can be realized in today’s age as library computer databases. He speaks of the possibility to condense an entire library of books to fit the end of a desk. In this day and age, fitting an entire library of books onto a handheld device is more like it. The Internet and the development of search engines seem to be the modern-day answer to Bush’s forward thinking. He talks of how the human mind works by association of thought, an “intricate web of trails.” Though he notes that duplicating a system for indexing based on this idea is not hopeful, it absolutely exists today. The Internet works with selection by association to appeal to the mind. So much research is put towards how to make sites accessible, what hooks traffic, what constitutes site aesthetics, all to make web pages and search engines more successful.
Bush describes so many areas for technological improvement that have now been incorporated into everyday life, such as credit cards, computers, cell phones, scientific calculators, voice activated word processors, digital cameras, and internet search engines. It is something I have never thought through entirely, how different human intellectual progress and experience would be without the advancements we have made since Bush’s 1945 essay. He notes, “There may be millions of fine thoughts, and the account of the experience on which they are based, all encased within stone walls of acceptable architectural form; but if the scholar can get at only one a week by diligent search, his syntheses are not likely to keep up with the current scene” (Bush 7). Our age of technology is all about keeping people up to speed. It is growing and growing at such an incredible speed which leaves me wondering; are we eventually going to have to come up with a new system for indexing the internet when it gets too large to comprehend? In Bush’s time, the impossibility for people to stay afloat on all the information out there was a problem, and yet I can’t even imagine a person out there who knows all there is to know on the internet today.