parody/satire

Mixed-media object. Typography cards; transparent code phone and card poems; web app

"Do You Have Balls?" is a slideshow prose-poem by Richard Holeton that explores issues of masculinity and the body. The presenter muses about how the presence or absence of testes affects his feelings of self-worth and way of relating to others. Each of the section headings is an iteration of the Seussian mantra: "Yes, I have ___ ball(s), and you have ___" Holeton previously experimented with the slideshow format in his works: "Voyeur With Dog" (2009) and "Custom Orthotics Changed My Life" (2010). As with these other slideshow fiction pieces, "Do You Have Balls?" incorporates elements like: bullet points, large, easy-to-read text, still images, graphs and tables, a summary of key points, and even a closing Thank You slide.

"Thirteen Ways of Killing a Scrubjay" is a prose-poem in the form of a blog that explores the theme of modern violence. The work is a "playful" response to the Wallace Stevens' poem "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" (1954). The journal entries detail ludicrously gruesome and elaborate plans to murder the helpless birds: from poison pellets to cyanide darts to water cannons.

The blog fiction was first published online in 2007. In 2015, it was exhibited at ISEA International. 

MetaQuest is a text adventure game with fantasy elements that parodies the genre itself. It's called MetaQuest because of its heavy use of meta jokes, and the whole game is quite self aware, often breaking the fourth wall. The game starts with "Much to your disappointment, you find yourself trapped in a text adventure." 

myBALL is a satirical work masquerading as an informative Flash-based commercial site. It presents an innovative children's toy, myBALL, which is a robotic friend and robust parental surveillance unit. The work satirizes the rhetoric and reasoning of so many commercial ventures, as well as the rhetoric and content of commercial media arts.

(Source: Author Description from ELC, vol 1)

A work of interactive fiction following one man's darkly comical search for his missing wife.

Game, game, game and again game is a digital poem, retro-game, an anti-design statement and a personal exploration of the artist's changing worldview lens. Much of the western world's cultural surroundings, belief systems, and design-scapes, create the built illusion of clean lines and definitive choice, cold narrow pathways of five colors, three body sizes and encapsulated philosophy. Within net/new media art the techno-filter extends these straight lines into exacting geometries and smooth bit rates, the personal as WYSIWYG buttons. This game/artwork, while forever attached to these belief/design systems, attempts to re-introduce the hand-drawn, the messy and illogical, the human and personal creation into the digital, via a retro-game style interface, Hovering above and attached to the poorly drawn aesthetic is a personal examination of how we/I continually switch and un-switch our dominate belief systems. Moving from levels themed for faith or real estate, for chemistry or capitalism, the user triggers corrected poetry, jittering creatures and death and deathless noises. In addition each level contains short videos from the artist's childhood, representing those brief young interactions which spark out eventual beliefs. Game, game, game and again game is less a game about scoring and skill, and more an awkward and disjointed atmospheric, the self built into a jumping, rolling meander of life.

(Source: Author's description from Electronic Literature Collection, Volume Two)

In the early days of the web, Marsha cheerfully launches a home page devoted to her favorite angels and invites them to come and play. They do, and they are not friendly. The Fall of the Site of Marsha shows three states of her site, captured in Spring, Summer, and Fall, each getting progressively darker as the angels haunt the beleaguered Marsha, reveal her husband's infidelity (from clues found on the site), and drag Marsha and her home page into madness and Gothic ruin.

(Source: Author description, Electronic Literature Collection, Vol. 1.)

The Fall of the Site of Marsha by Rob Wittig is an interactive electronic literature experience presented in the form of a late-nineties web site. The piece follows Marsha, an eccentric woman who creates a website centered around her obsession with angels. Things begin to get strange, dark, and a little creepy when the Angels Marsha loves so much make an appearance on her web site. Three different versions of Marsha’s site are available for view: Spring ’98, Summer ’98, and Fall ’98. Each version of the site is very different. The sites get progressively darker as the angels take control. At first, the page is just a goofy site about a woman’s angel obsession, but it eventually becomes nearly unrecognizable. As time goes on and the tone gets progressively darker, the site begins to fill with eerie messages from the angels. Each version of the web site is equipped with a variety of links and pages that contribute to the overall story. The user views the story organically through message boards and secret areas of the site. There is much to be discovered, from Marsha’s husband’s infidelity to sinister implications regarding her father’s death. For full effect and the complete story, each version of the site should be fully explored. The site isn't just the way the story is presented; it is the story itself. (Source: Electronic Literature Directory, http://directory.eliterature.org/node/3942)