Bindigirl

Prema Murthy, 1999

There is sometimes a fine line between pornography and art. With Bindigirl, Prema Murthy explores that line. With the site she creates a fictional character Bindigirl, who is an online cam girl. Through this character she explores the concepts of voyeurism versus participation, ownership of sexuality, and how we use the technology we develop. She says "bindi is meant to poke fun at how we have used these tools so far to achieve a so-called "higher existence" and "greater cultural understanding." She also uses the Bindi dot as censorship as commentary of how out religious icons have lost their meaning as we've "progressed."
"The idea of the bindi originated to symbolize the sacred third eye. It also came to signify women's marital status in India. But even now the idea of the bindi for Indian girls has become totally decorative. Back in the day it was made with red powder. Now they're made from disposable stickers you can stick on. So, even in India the meaning has been distorted. There's been another layer of distortion added through its co-opting by pop media and pop culture. Now the bindi has become this trendy fad but women in Queens who wear bindis still get harassed. There's this whole gang of people who call themselves "dot busters" and they harass these women and commit violent crimes against them. In Bindigirl, the round circles I placed over body parts was to play with this idea of what is the sacred and what can be bought. For example, in an art gallery, a red dot by a piece of art it means its been sold. "

I found this site interesting in that it is close enough to pornography to make one feel guilty when looking at it in class, like I might get in trouble, which is undoubtedly one of the buttons she is trying to push. There is also a great deal of humor in the site. If you select the "chat" option you get treated to a cybersex session that is anything but sexy!

Group Project

When we did the self portrait project, we were relating ourselves to the internet. As an active online gamer, that is easy to do as my presence on the internet is more me than me in real life. If you google me, you won't be able to find me. But if you google my online persona, it's the first result you get. Both the self portrait and my part of the group project reflect that.

Of the sites we've looked at as part of our net.art research, the ones that have influenced the development of my part of the group project are as follows:

Halbeath. I liked the use solely of flash, and the addition of sound. I wouldn't have sound in mine if not for that site more than likely. Also their use of real world photography influenced my decision to use the waterfalls outside of Portland, Oregon (these are pictures I took there in 2007) as the location for my character.

a number of the sites, from Superbad to the Bomb Project used the "click around" approach to guiding you through the content, which led me to likewise us that approach to advance through different portions of the narrative..

Halbeath

Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries
and Takuji Kogo for Candy Factory 2002

This is a multimedia flash film that tells a few different narratives at the same time. The main "story" relates to the story of Halbeath, Scotland where "South Korean Company Hyundai & LG started a project...for the construction of microchip plant... The construction of the factory was delayed by the financial crisis in Asia in those days. The factory was restarted by US Company Motorola since 2000. But now the factory is closed again since they left in 2001." This is the story relayed visually by clicking on the screen. Images of the closed and fenced off plant appear as a blight upon a once pristine landscape.

the song is actually a remix of two different songs. "Arirang" is an old Korean folk song that dates back at least 600 years. there are multiple versions of the song, this particular version was recorded in 1946. the other half is a Scottish folk song "I Ainse Loved a Lass" that also dates back several hundreds of years. both are love songs dealing with loss and help paint a picture of emotional desolation caused by the construction and abandonment of the plant.

The cel phone that forms the main image of the film clip represents Motorola, which is most well known for their cel phones.

Siberian Deal Kathy Rae Huffman and Eva Wohlgemuth, 1995

The mission of the Siberian Deal was, as the producers put it: "...trading real objects and virtual information. At these two levels the project explores values and concepts for East and West. It tries to establish contacts and to find out parameters of communication with people in Russia/Siberia."

In the west, we have grown up with a very specific image of Siberia, given to us by Hollywood and the news media: a harsh, inhospitable, frozen wasteland where the only people are those sent there as punishment for crimes committed against the Soviet Union. This project portrays Siberia differently. It is still harsh, but it is portrayed more warmly, as a quaint, old world region. It focuses less on the environment and more on the people.

Part of the site focuses on the "deals" in which rather than buy stuff form the Siberians, they use items obtained in the west to trade for comparably valued items from Siberia. In that way it acts as more of a cultural exchange between nations and peoples.

An amusing anecdote from the end of the travel log is that they had to communicate through pictures in order to tell the restaurant what they wanted to eat for dinner, which is a nice analogy for the internet since so much of internet communication is done through images.