Can You See Me Through the Computer?

Can You See Me Through the Computer? JULIET MARTIN World Wide Web, 1996 __ ...... ................................ In a conventional relationship between viewer and art, there is often no direct collaboration between viewer and piece. They do not work together to bring the piece to maturity; the piece is finished by the artist in his studio before the viewer ever approaches it. In comparison, when a computer program is part of the process, a bionic engages_ the usr dialogue occurs between user, computer, and artist. This synergy is fundamental to a complete experience of the work. A piece of art that exists as a computer program relies on an impetus for instantiation. Before a user executes the code that brings the piece to life, it is merely a set of instructions, ones and zeroes that need to be transformed into art. During the production of those ones and zeroes, the artist becomes an electronic strategist. Instead of concrete directions regarding how the piece will act, the artist develops algorithms by which the computer can make decisions. An improvisational ballet between art and user is choreographed by the artist: user acts, piece responds; piece acts, user responds. The artist has willingly handed over the job of decision-maker to the computer and the viewer. Ultimately, the user's faculties of thought, action, and emotion are extended by the computer's ability to take in information, make complex decisions, and react accordingly. In this sense, the computer becomes a bionic extension of the user, joining artist and user in a complex dialogue. With its framework grounded in algorithmic programming, my Web site Can You See Me Through the Computer? engages the user in just such a bionic dialog. It consists of four small components-oooxxxooo, Drowning Girls Are Sexy, A itch's IWork Is Never Done, and cocktails that jointy elicit the exchange. The oooxxxooo part of the site is a collection of hypertext prose formed as concrete poetry. It began as an experiment with the limitations of HTML, the language in which Web documents are written. Seen from far away, each bit of prose forms a geometric shape, while from up close, users can read the text that forms the geometry. Some text is placed off-screen, forcing the user to go on a scrolling journey to read it. The prose chosen for oooxxxooo is a deliberately provocative combination of subjects, including, for example, women, sexuality, dentistry, and computers. Drowning Girls Are Se.xy is the outgrowth of a linear short story of the same name in which a girl swimming in a stream is mistaken for a fish by a young boy. The boy hooks the girl on his lure, reels her in, and cuts open her belly, only then realizing she is a girl and not a fish. For the Web site, I extracted the moment when the girl is cut open by the boy and told it from six different narrative perspectives . There is no real end to the story, just as there is no true beginning. A IEiVtch's Work Is Never Done opens with a screen filled with scrollable windows containing images of telephones and demons. As with a slot machine, the user can mix and match the telephones and demons to create the "right" combination (which, ironically, has no effect on what comes after); then, after the user clicks on an item, a random screen appears with either historical quotes condemning women for being witches or prose parodying the quotes. The user can bring up more text screens or continue forward to meet Witch Juliet by clicking on the words "A Witch's Work Is Never Done." A small window inset, gemlike, into the computer screen fills with an algorithmically generated, vertically symmetrical dot pattern at the beginning of cocktails. The dots are fixed for a moment and slowly fade to invisible. Below them, a random sentence fragment frames the Rorschach-like image. If the user clicks on one of the dots before it disappears, another screen of dots is generated. The sentence fragment along the bottom, however, is a continuation of the previous one. Digital Salon, Artists' Statements 395 ...