Applet Art from Bora Bora
Already for 3 years we live in the new millennium. We have fast computers, broadband connections, huge flat screens, there are even three buttons on our mouses. And there are so many of us that the bridge over the Digital Divide will soon break under our weight. We are in the future.
But very often WWW makes this impression disappear. Leaving messages in blogs, rephrasing thoughts for google, opening and closing tiny pages that do not even have a scrollbar and skipping intros is not the future, it is the fantasy of developers prepared for Y2K crash, but not for Y2K. Emergency scenario.
Absolutely another feeling is when you see how 90s utopias come true. One can now put 3000 animated gifs on one HTML page and the browser will not crash. You can go through VRML worlds fast and smooth. Background images download before you finish to read the first paragraph.
Dream by dream, dreams come true. Recently I found out that Java Applets don?t freeze my browser any more. Lakes, puzzles, mosaics, lenses, fractals, plasmas, running texts, rotating menus. It is exactly them who make the web to be a very special place. What a pity that they were overlooked by designers and artists (probably because they never worked on Macs) and are not a part of the web of today.
It is really a shame that we were not patient enough and blamed java applets developers every time our PCs crashed. As if it is the biggest trouble in the world to restart your computer.
To correct this aesthetic injustice I decided to devote the Teleportacia net art workshop at French Polynesian Bora Bora to java applets. To come back to the roots and to work with classics of the genre.
Fortunately my plan worked: Young Bora Borian artists appeared very sensitive to the traditions of the web. Without any ambition to conquer the European media art market they made an invaluable contribution to web culture.
I would like to thank Fabio Ciucci and all the participants for their enthusiasm. Marc-Andre Zani of L?Appetisserie Cyber Cafe ? for hosting the workshop and allowing us to install Java Runtime Environment despite the complains of other clients. Personal of Meridian hotel for unforgettable beds and breakfasts. And of course this trip and project would not have happened without financial support from the Society of American-Russian Veterans of WWII and Veterans of Resistance Union (Italy).
http://art.teleportacia.org/exhibition/merry_christmas/
Olia Lialina
Website: http://art.teleportacia.org/exhibition/merry_christmas/
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