web 1.0 | D9 ELMCIP

This fun, playful, one-hour workshop is primarily intended for participants who identify as women, femme, nonbinary, trans, and/or queer. However, anyone is welcome to attend. What’s a queer femme aesthetic? I conceptualize it as a hyper-saturated, self-conscious, postmodern, performative femininity. Glitter, sequins, lip gloss, nail polish, dELiA*s magazine, ‘90s neon pink and slime green. Digitally, the queer femme aesthetic was innovated in spaces like Tumblr and MySpace, with tools like Blingee and Angelfire Dollz. Of course, there is no one definition of a queer/femme digital aesthetic, though I’d argue that the nail polish emoji is pretty key! In this workshop, we’ll first explore how and why net artists like Olia Lialina, Marisa Olson, and Momo Pixel break “good design” rules and embrace a Web 1.0 aesthetic. Queer femme internet aesthetics often intentionally subvert minimalist design principles and usability heuristics, making the user aware of the platform/medium rather than concealing it. Building on the “Queer & Femme Digital Literature” panel that I chaired at AWP 2020, featuring Sarah Ciston, Sam Cohen, Kate Durbin, Feliz Lucia Molina, and Sandra Rosales (https://www.awpwriter.org/awp_conference/event_detail/17596), we’ll also discuss these multimedia aesthetics in a literary context. Then, we’ll experience digital femme history and culture firsthand through the embodied limitations and affordances of using web 1.0 technology: participants will make an old-fashioned glitter GIF. Although the 1.0 Blingee aesthetics are echoed in contemporary Instagram and Snapchat stickers, we’ll use one of the “original” platforms, clunky by our current standards, to experience not only the aesthetics but also the tools and techniques inherent to the platform that enabled those aesthetics. Since the Blingee platform, developed in 2006, is no longer functional, we’ll use the open-access platform GlitterPhoto (https://www.glitterphoto.net/), developed in 2003. Finally, we'll share our creations and think together toward queer femme digital aesthetic futures. Participants will need to have access to a web browser (Chrome or Firefox).

Record Status

Not yet reviewed

Abstract (in English)

This paper explores the process of discovering works of elit by focusing on the role of the online literary journal. The heyday of Web 1.0, the late 1990s, gave birth to the first generation of electronic literature. To support this emergent art form, this period also delivered a multitude of online literary journals that showcased hypertexts, kinetic poetry, animations, and interactive fiction as well as scholarly articles, interviews with authors, book reviews, and critical discourse. But as the Web became a more graphic-friendly navigation space and debates about cybertext vs. hypertext took centerstage in critical forums, celebration of electronic literature in web-zines and journals seemed to dry up. In the first few years of the twenty-first century, most of the literary journals that had flourished in the late '90s had ceased operations. What are the spaces for electronic literature and its discovery in the 21st century? How do these spaces or lack of them map and remap the field of electronic literature and its criticism? This paper considers the implications of these questions by thinking about the changing spaces for discovering and discussing electronic literature online.

(Source: Author's abstract, 2008 ELO Conference)