In order to capture an array of emotions, I’ll write part of this blog while experiencing the first half of Tuesday’s reading, My Boyfriend Came Back From the War.
On the very outset, which, what, where or when is not explictly offered for this reading, so I cannot say whether the war refers to the current war in Iraq, or war in years past. Regardless, one can still argue that the emotion tearing and impact can be very much the same. Onto the hypertext.
Written as I went along:
I keep checking every page for hidden, black-on-black text. So far, that does not seem to be the case.
I have somewhat cheated in the exploration of this site: maybe the hyperlinked text is meant to be chosen at random, but in order to maintain some sort of order, I have been mousing over each link, and quickly checking the URL as it displays on the Internet browser status bar. I attempt to click 117.html before 130.html, etc etc. Overall I have kept some semblance of numerical order. I will see whether or not that changes how it is experienced.
“Don’t kill.” Click. “Him.” Click. “Them.” Click. “ME”
Several new frames have appeared since starting this part of the homework. Four are now empty and sit at the bottom of the page. It is possible for a link on a separate part of the page to redirect its contents to any chosen frame, I will wait and see whether or not that happens. Maybe the whole of the page will be divided into HTML frames and left blank at the end.
Who are the tigers the page mentioned?
“I keep your photo here” — three clicks later, the photo disappears. I checked the black background for text, there still is none. Onto the next link, its destination is marked as 164.html. The other visible link is 169.html, but I will still maintain some sort of numeric order.
Why a 20th Century Fox logo?
I found an equivalent of a newspaper byline: the author’s e-mail address and an external link that is titled the Last Rest Net Art Museum. The copyright of this particular page by Olia Lialina is 1996. (That means it is not about the current Iraq War…)
Found a clock. The time is 9:16.
Another clock, the time is 6:02. Is it a.m. or p.m., I wonder?
Third clock, 1:57.
No more links left to click, a total of sixteen unevenly distrubted frames cover the webpage, in addition to a seventeenth frame that holds half the space, and has two pictures. One picture looks suspiciously like a window, but it is too heavily pixelated to conclusively tell.
Exercise done. What was the intent of this text?
My opinion is that it was meant to evoke an emotion response, hence why I recorded it as I did–so I could write done my immediate thoughts to each part of the piece. To me, the short, unpunctuated phrases, read to me like halting, hesitate or quiet conversation–conversation that was occasionally interrupted by sudden outbursts, as signified by capital letters.
But beyond interpreting the language and grammar of this piece, overall it seemed to be an unfolding maze. Perhaps my attempt to somewhat organize it was a good one, because each segment seemed to lead into the next as long as it is done in some sort of order. Still, there were several times when I could not track done the page that was to proceed another, and still other times when I would jump ahead to page 169 without reading 140-147. However, this overall did not seem to affect the understanding of the text, which read to me like something from an art museum: war can tear people apart, make them sad, make them angry, and put distance between life before and life after a war.