At first glance, Andy Campbell’s “The Incomplete” presents itself as an ontological, sort of abstract piece of digital art. As Kutoof noted, the laptop opens and tabs are able to be clicked, but most bring up the error message: “the volume is corrupt and unreadable.” Opening Internet Explorer only reveals a webpage bearing the same image of a laptop. Seemingly,…
Author: jsherba
Artificial Visuals in “Chemical Landscapes”
When I was first starting to read full-length novels as a child, I remember skimming the page for dialogue – the only part of the story I was interested in. The descriptions of people and landscapes bored me (and interfered with my own imagination), so I skipped them. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was missing the…
Mincing Words in “Correspondence”
The Surrealists of the early 20th century were known for cutting up and rearranging found literature and compositing new texts from the old, free from the binds of logic and creative suppression. In the 21st century, this technique’s digital counterpart is known as stir fry text, coined and spearheaded by visual poet Jim Andrews. Programmed in DHTML, the pieces are “texts that…
The Absurdist Tour Guide: wandering through “Sydney’s Siberia”
Jason Nelson’s Sydney’s Siberia opens to a framed portrait of a man on a wall, with Nelson’s red pen marks circling his head like a halo. The text above the portrait, in both black and white letters, reads: “between 1875 and 1877 twelve men and women created the folly history society. their goal was to photograph strangers, build histories of important and far…