There are plenty of things to dislike about the intranet and “being online” in general. In a world where we have access to more information than ever before, we also have access to more unsettling information. We have the ability to happen upon more lies, more falsehoods, and more manipulation than we previously did. We feel each and every terrible news story when, in previous decades, some of those stories would have had more trouble reaching us. It’s so easy to hate some of things that being online has brought into our lives that we can forget that there are some things that it’s uniquely great at — like new and weird art.
While we all love a good creepypasta or viral Reddit thread, the internet is simply the medium by which these stories spread. They could exist anywhere outside of the sites where they live. One person’s creepypasta is another’s urban legend, after all. What I am looking at is something a bit different: stories told in a way that incorporates technology across the internet and makes something about the internet itself part of the story.
Here we have three very different projects, one of which is ongoing. They all share the fact that they could not exist without the internet.
Mouchette
Mouchette was a fairly early internet artwork created by the pseudonymous “Mouchette,” a girl who is “nearly thirteen years old” and “an artist.” Years later it was revealed that the website was actually created by artist Martine Neddam, who is known in the digital art world for her personae (she is also the artist behind David Still and XiaoQian).
The site was based on Mouchette, a 1937 novel by Georges Bernanos. It explores themes of sex and death and is made more disturbing by the age of the supposed site owner. There’s a story and it’s not necessarily one most people would want to linger on, but you have to appreciate the time that went into it.