Simon says…
“Have you ever wanted to kill somebody?”
I had only known him for about 20 minutes when he asked me that question… I stayed speechless, maybe because I didn’t expect the question, maybe because I was scanning my mind to make sure that the “no” was 100% honest. He was amused with my silence; he smiled and recommended a book, “The Intimate Diary of A Killer” by Alexander de Querzen. After all, he had only made the question to start talking about Simon, a serial killer living within the hypertext pages of this virtual book…
I read the book and although I am not a fan of violence -either portrayed in films or in books- I got to like it. Maybe because I enjoyed the contrasts: raw violence against hidden sensitivity, descriptive scenes against purely poetic ones, slang language against verbal eloquence. Maybe because I liked the innovations: a non-linear narration, chapters changing order every time you refresh the homepage, “censored” parts that get revealed if you move your cursor above them, a constantly changing design, chapters added from time to time.
That was 2 years ago. I ever since have twisted and turned around my studies (and my life, but that’s a different issue) till I have got myself investigating upon aspects of immateriality in contemporary art.
The issues of immateriality, art and technology have driven me towards virtual worlds. Digital art, hypertext theory. And there, as I was reading the ideas of Bush about how the mind works through association and the ideas of Barthes about the ideal text, I remembered Simon (yes, the mind works through association, after all). And I decided it was time to write about him, among other matters.
In my latest article on Interartive, “Beyond Materiality: A digital revolution in life, art and logos” (article in English and Greek) I write about how digital technology has moved aspects of life, art and word towards immateriality. I start by exploring today’s virtual universes (chat, video games, mails), then I comment on the issue of immateriality in art, from the 1960s conceptual art until today’s Internet art. Lastly, I see how hypertext has evolved, from a pure idea in the texts of Vannevar Bush, Ted Nelson, Andries Van Dam and Roland Barthes to its materialization and its prevalence today.
This is a very special issue of Interartive: all articles (including the virtual gallery) are focused on Digital Art and we launch a new page about Internet Art, where we shall add links from net art works.
From Internet art to hypertext articles, from friends to virtual serial killers, you can come across pretty much anything in this virtual universe…
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