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