Published on the Web (social network)

Author Rachel Visser wrote a unique insta novel about Farihah, a young Afghan refugee who just like other teenagers dreams about a future. At a young age, Farihah flees from Afghanistan and arrives in the Netherlands, where she is eventually living in a refugee centre. Together with her friends Noor and Lucas she dreams of going to secondary school and to become an artist. This dream is severely interrupted when she received a letter from the Dutch government.

"'Portal' is an interactive net.dance in three parts that follows a traveler passing from the physical world to a virtual world called the Sunset/Sunrise. The work touches on the spatial and aesthetic relationship between virtual and physical spaces, as well as the relationship between user and digital content. Cinematic and kinetic, the traveler uses dance as the main mode of communication and means to travel between worlds. This ambiguity between the real and unreal is reflected in the content: analog footage is mixed with digital resolutions as the figure moves from a New York City street to a digitally created desert landscape. Traditional dance film techniques, as seen in kinesthetic editing and image creation, are combined with interactivity and screen design."--From Turbulence

Me, Myself and I in Dystopia is part of the large project called, “Humanity: From Dystopia to Survival” which is an interactive survival game and audio-visual music performance. Although the original concept of this project was to involve audience members to play the real-time interactive survival game, this version explores how the pandemic has shifted the sense of collectivity to individuality and depicts what it means to remain in a dystopian society alone by re-creating my own versions of self. In this video, I take multiple shots of my own photos (represented as an outline of faces) and speak to the microphone to interact with the video in real-time. The voices and air that I blow to the microphone affect my own photographic representations in the video by blurring the image. I will be saying random words to the microphone and also exhale air as a gesture of meditation during the crisis. The interactive video will demonstrate how an individual yearns to survive dystopia as he/she struggles to fight the solitude, controls, and chaos of society. As each photo of myself is taken, it will also trigger a new sound file as a way to intensify the mood of being alone. This work was created by an interactive design prototype for Max-MSP software (programmer: Martin Ritter), whereby I design how people can talk to the microphone and affect the visuals to symbolize saving one another and humanity as a whole. While demonstrated this work alone, it also powerfully suggests what it means to adapt in the constantly evolving covid era.

Source: exhibition documentation 

This poetic experience uses Twine and operates like a hypertext choose-your-own-adventure. The player must navigate a map to unlock clues about the nature of the landscape - a process called "medicating." Throughout this hellish roadtrip, the player's navigation depends on choices in cardinal directions, character interactions and even dictionary definitions. This work was created as one half of my graduate thesis. Collectively, the work on the page and the hypertext poem is known as Educational Materials for Mostly Mitigated Maidens. I completed this graduate program in 2019, obtaining a Masters in poetry. Since then, I spend my time writing, exploring other digital spaces, and teaching college composition at Solano Community College. Here is the link to Directional Pilgrim. It will launch in your browser and, for the full experience, requires speakers or headphones. Use the mouse to click and point - no other buttons are required. Google Chrome is recommended browser.

Utopia is a state which allows for a certain amount of resolution - a period or space which exists in equilibrium. Dystopia, then, is a state in which nothing can be resolved. A solution is needed, but every effort to balance opposing forces results in a renewal of already overbearing systems in control. To me, it is this repetition of effort that characterizes a dystopia. Landscape comes as an afterthought, and can take many forms. In 2018, fires ravaged the state of California. This was the space that I began my work in. Although the natural world around me expanded in all directions, the feeling was one of claustrophobia. Our yearly cycle revolves around our wildfire season - there is no way to avoid it, and each year it gets worse. This, coupled with my own anxieties surrounding mental health and addition, inspired the dystopian space of Directional Pilgrim. Just as medieval pilgrims circled Jerusalem, hitting holy waystations and reading (and therefore reenacting) the Bible passages relevant to the particular place, so does the player as pilgrim revisit the passages in this apocalyptic landscape. By redoing (and often repeating) these experiences, the player may come to find meaning in the journey itself - even though the resolution to the narrative remains elusive.

Big Data is a term used to describe, in general, the gathering of vast amounts of digital information and its subsequent processing, through sophisticated computational techniques, with the purpose of obtaining knowledge. In the case of Big Data, the poem, the term refers to the massive collection of personal information communicated online and its processing for commercial purposes, especially for-profit endeavors related to a persuasion achieved through the detailed knowledge of individuals, a persuasion aimed to be invisible. The poem is not situated in the present but in the near future, when the collection of personal information will be achieved by individual activities online, by the contributions carried out by other people and by sensors that are part of the Internet of things. The personal data, aggregated, will be processed at very high speeds with the assistance of artificial intelligence. The combination between the massive collection of personal data and its subsequent statistical processing, with that emphasis on inferential statistics to achieve persuasive objectives, will lead to a terrible reality. In general, the logic of statistics will be used to define human existence individually and socially in a deterministic way. Big Data's resulting knowledge, the poem suggests, is equivalent to the omniscience generally attributed to deities.

While the advertising industry heralds the use of digital communication technologies as a form of individual empowerment and self-efficacy, people’s interactions with their devices are proving to also have significant negative effects on society. The poem is situated in the near future, when the collection of personal information will be achieved by individual activities online, by the contributions carried out by other people, and through sensors that are part of the Internet of Things. The personal data, aggregated, will be processed at very high speeds with the assistance of artificial intelligence. As it happens in this generative video poem, unique pieces of audiovisual media will be created on-the-fly to achieve persuasive objectives based on individual profiles. The combination between the massive collection of personal data and its subsequent statistical processing, aimed at achieving persuasive objectives, will push us towards a terrible reality. Ultimately, the logic of statistics will be used to define human existence individually and socially in a deterministic way and, unfortunately, it will be guided mostly by commercial interests.

'Een hele echte' is a story told through emails that readers receive in the course of 14 days. In the story, Helen is looking online for a new bass gitar. She stumbles upon Tarak, who is not a real person, but an artificial intelligence entity. Helen experiences the enormous influence of her live on the internet, which is completely taken over by Tarak. 

This is the complete genome of the Covid-19-virus as a soundpoem, using the source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore?term=MN9089%E2%80%A63

Brooklyn Baxter is rich and the world should ideally be his oyster. However, he is trapped inside the shells of his own mind. But rich kids do not get sad.

After getting transferred from yet another school, he is forced into Behavioral Modification as a part of his curriculum where he meets Anastasia Collins. 

On scholarship. On Behavioral Mod. And on a wheelchair.

When a mutual friend takes his own life after his forced sex tape is leaked, his family slowly seems to steadily fall apart and the ghosts of his past threaten to come back and haunt him, Brooklyn turns to Anastasia for an escape.

Because in togetherness, there is peace.

And in solidarity, there is hope.

They embark on a life-changing road trip.

I Got Up 2020, Pandemic Edition started as an Instagram series inspired by On Kawara’s 1968-79 daily postcard ritual. This version of I Got Up 2020, Pandemic Edition showcases moving images made during the summer of 2020. 

From 1968-1979 On Kawara sent picture postcards to two friends, stamped with the time he “got up.” 

His series, I Got Up, is collected by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. 

This riff on I Got Up is a visible record of getting up while confined to the house and simultaneously enacting the roles of mother, artist, housekeeper, and teacher. 

The Met website suggests, “With tremendous economy of means and a surprising visual elegance, Kawara creates a complex meditation on time, existence, and the relationship between art and life.” 

Made during the pandemic, these daily vignettes interpret “getting up” as unusually labor intensive—creative on the best days and merely possible on the worst. 

As a result of my the quarantine, and the collapse of professional and domestic spaces, this series of getting up is a creative family adventure. 

(Source: Author's abstract)