Auto/Biographical Webs: Self-Representations

As I mentioned in my last post (February 23), I've recovered from my archives the bibliography of auto/biographical webs that I maintained online from 2001 to 2003. Yesterday, I looked at the section that covered innovative approaches to travelogues; today, I examined the section on self-representations, a term I use loosely to describe a range of hybrid texts by writers, artists, documentarians, and scholars. (Classifications are fluid, and genres blur.) Although I did have to update several links in this section, which had not been updated since February 13, 2003, more than 100 sites are still accessible. The following examples suggest the scope of the work. I've saved historical adaptations for another time.*

(Dates indicate when the site was added to the bibliography or when the entry was updated, a notational system started midway through the project.)

*A separate post addresses letters.

SELF-REPRESENTATIONS (GENERAL)

Caney, Diane, and Robin Pettard, "Imaginative Reading V," http://www.overthere.com.au/writing/imaginative.html

Dallal, Joyce, "Finding Home" ("a story based on my father's struggle to legally immigrate and become an American citizen.") http://www.janm.org/ffs/gallery/dallal/index.htm. 6/18/02

Denning, Sharon, "Consumption 3: never sent unsolicited" ("never sent unsolicited uses one offshoot of internet technologies, junk email, to explore how we can view ourselves through how we are marketed, and to create one example of how new technologies and mass marketing's use of new technologies creates an impression of ourselves. . ."), http://art.denning.net/c3/, Denning submitted link, 6/17/01

Falco, Edward, "Self-Portrait as Child with Father"

Fisher, Caitlin, "These Waves of Girls," a hypermedia novella that explores "memory, girlhoods, cruelty, childhood play and sexuality.") http://www.yorku.ca/caitlin/waves *Winner of the 2001 Electronic Literature Award for fiction, http://www.eliterature.org/Awards2001/index.shtml.

Gaiter, Colette, "The Natural Order of Things" (This interactive multi-media artist, looks at race, culture, and gender in post-apartheid South Africa and the United States.) http://www.digidiva.net/sa

Goldberg, Marianne, and Christianne Brown, "Be to Want I: A Performance Piece for Hypertext," http://english.ttu.edu/kairos/3.2/response/Kendall/goldberg/index.htm; see also "Notes," http://english.ttu.edu/kairos/3.2/response/Kendall/goldberg/goldberg.htm

Horvath, Peter, (includes three pieces with video and sound) http://turbulence.org/studios/horvath/index.html, 2/13/03

Ingraham, Elizabeth, "The Skin Series" (sculpture and poetry) (Ingraham states, "In this on-going series of work, I am exploring how expectation, desire and convention—our own and others—form casings which shape our deepest selves and which become so familiar they seem like our own skin. . . . ") http://www.culturalterrain.com/skins/skinshome.html, Ingraham submitted link, 7/22/02

Jackson, Shelley, "Ineradicable Stain," http://www.ineradicablestain.com/; see also "The Doll Games," by Shelley and Pamela Jackson, http://www.ineradicablestain.com/dollgames/, and "My Body," http://www.altx.com/thebody/

Karasic, Carmin, "With Liberty and Justice for All" (In the form of a family album, an African American woman who was born in the early 1950s looks back on her early years.) http://home.comcast.net/~c.karasic/xensei/wlajfa/, link updated 2/24/06

LaPorta, Tina, "Distance," http://turbulence.org/Works/Distance, see also interview with LaPorta, http://enculturation.gmu.edu/3_1/laporta/index.html, link updated 2/24/06

Lialina, Olia, "My Boyfriend Came Back From the War," http://www.teleportacia.org/war

Lisa, "Welcome to Lisa’s Web World" (step back in time, 1950s, etc.), http://www.angelfire.com/retro2/lisa/index.html; Lisa’s nostalgia café, 1960s, 70s, 80s (Time Traveler)—includes extensive database with ext. links, e.g., music, tv, lifestyle, fashion, etc. http://www.angelfire.com/retro2/lisa/nostalgia.html. (links updated 2/24/06)

Lopez, Jacalyn Lopez, "Glass Houses: A Tour of American Assimilation from a Mexican-American Perspective," link updated 2/24/06

Malloy, Judy, "Dorothy Abrona McCrue" (hypertext fiction), http://www.judymalloy.net/dorothy/, link updated 2/24/06

Matanle, Steven, and Ingrid Ankerson, "Anywhere" (poem with audio), http://www.poemsthatgo.com/gallery/fall2000/anywhere/anywhere.html

Ming Cheng Yun, David, "Subway Story: An Exploration of Me, Myself, and I," http://www.cyberartsweb.org/cpace/ht/dmyunfinal/frames.html, link updated 7/22/02

Nettles, Bea (photographer), http://www.beanettles.com/; see Online Works, including "Turning 50" and "Grace's Daughter."

Pack, Jeff, "Growing Up Digerate," http://www.cyberartsweb.org/cpace/infotech/digerate/TITLE.HTML, link updated 7/22/02

Palmer, Marcy, "A dis-house-jointed" (". . . explores ideas of space,location, and physicality in online experience. . . . ") http://www.dis-house-jointed.net/index.html, 5/22/02

Powazek, Derek, "San Francisco Stories," http://www.sfstories.com/, 4/12/02

Rodriguez, Nino, "Portrait of the Artist as a Home Page," ("Nino is Mexican, Italian, or Russian. He is an 8-year-old boy, a 45-year-old man. He wants a girlfriend. He wants a boyfriend. He loves his wife. He wears suits. He dresses like a homeboy. . . ." Claire Barliant, Rhizome Net Art News) http://www.geocities.com/portraitoftheartistasahomepage/, 11/11/02

Squier, Joseph, "Urban Diary" (visual art, on " The Place" site; see also "Life with Father," memoir) http://theplace.walkerart.org/place.html, link updated 7/22/02

Stasuk, Rose, "Eyescream Jellyfish," (". . . Jacques Cousteau and Ingmar Bergman eat electric, Kool-Aid Häagen-Dazs and watch "Jason And The Argonauts" in 3-D.") http://www.mothermillennia.org/EyescreamJellyfishFront.html

Stern, Nathaniel, "hektor.net" ("a navigable artsite of photography, spoken word and video poetry. While viewers surf the site, hektor attempts to re-member. . . . However, similar to Julio Cortazar's Hopscotch, where readers can tackle any chapter, in any order, to assemble a whole story, this narrative is built by the listener, according to which pieces they have seen, in what context, and in which order. " N.S.) http://hektor.net/; for background on the artist, see http://nathanielstern.com/; Stern submitted link 8/23/02

Turner, Myron, "Autobiography" (" . . . takes as its subject matter the interconnected "village-like" family environment in which I grew up during World War II in The Bronx." MT) http://www.umanitoba.ca/mbvan/hpgs/auto/html/atitle.html; see also "Sea-Changes: A Metabiography" ( ". . . a collaborative biography project for artists in their 50's and up." Intro.) http://www.room535.org/sea-changes/, Turner submitted links, 5/14/01; second link updated 7/22/02

Weishaus, Joel, "Reality Dreams, Scroll One" (". . . an autobiography that consists of nineteen 'scrolls' of journals intersticed with reminiscences, poems, dreams, philosophy and critique. . . .") http://www.uiowa.edu/~iareview/tirweb/hypermedia/joel_weishaus/real-1.htm

COLLECTIONS AND COLLABORATIONS

Beller, Thomas, et al, "Mr. Beller’s Neighborhood," http://www.mrbellersneighborhood.com/, link updated 2/24/06

Chinese American Museum in Los Angeles, "Voices: Family Stories," http://www.camla.org/voices/toc.htm, 6/18/02

The City Stories Project, ("There is a thing that I call city-based storytelling. It's somewhere in between a personal journal and a city guide. It's a series of personal stories where the city itself becomes a character in your story. SF Stories is basically my long love letter to San Francisco. What city do you love?" Home page includes links to City Stories from around the United States and the world.) http://www.citystories.com/; See, for example, MiamiStories, http://www.miamistories.com/, 4/12/02

Community Word Project: Murals ("The murals were created by children ages 6-15 from the diverse communities of New York City's boroughs. They are the culminating works of year-long Community~Word residencies in which youth had the rare opportunity to learn how to give voice to themselves & their community through words and art. . . . Each mural is based on a line from a collaborative poem that was written by that class.") http://www.communitywordproject.org/index.htm, 5/7/02

The Cyber-Kitchen ("the cyber-kitchen' is aimed at building a collaborative net installation with its starting point in the cyber-domestic aesthetic. Currently there are 30 globally-based artists involved in this project. 24 artists' work will be available when the kitchen opens on 23rd July 2002 with the rest of the works added over the following two weeks. The project will then be ongoing with more 'objects' added to the kitchen and artists responses to them.") http://www.the-cyber-kitchen.com/, 8/7/02

Cyber Sisters Club (an after school activity for girls from an inner city elementary school in Allentown, Pennsylvania--meet the Cyber Sisters), http://www.lv.psu.edu/jkl1/sisters/

Don, Abbe, "Bubbe’s Back Porch," http://www.bubbe.com/; see also "No Soup, Just Matzoh Balls," http://www.bubbe.com/oomph/nsjmb/index.html

Finlay, Jeanie (Ruby Digital Arts and Design), "Heard It in the Playground" (". . . a lively intergenerational project initiated and designed by music and arts organisation Firebird. Musician and storyteller Sally Goldsmith worked through Spring and early Summer with a group of 8 and 9 year old children and a group of older residents (mostly living in sheltered housing), in the Lincolnshire village of Cherry Willingham. The project took children's experience and older people's memories of games and 'playing out' in the playground and street as a starting point for creative work - storytelling through oral testimony, collecting and sharing games, singing, songwriting, rhythm work, photography, sound recording.") http://www.firebirdtrust.sagenet.co.uk/welcome/welcomeframe.html, 4/19/02

Finlay, Jeanie (Ruby Digital Arts and Design), "Home Maker" ("Home Maker is the result of a Year of the Artist residency, which took place in the homes of four housebound older people in South Debyshire. Finlay spent time with each of the four people, getting to know them and making panoramic portraits of them which have now become part of an interactive, navigable online environment. By exploring the environment the viewer can visit Florrie, Roy, Betty and Lilian in their own living rooms and experience their histories, preoccupations and passions in the form of hidden mini video documentaries embedded in the online space.") http://www.home-maker.org.uk/, 4/19/02

Flax, Carol, "M/Other Stories" ("A poetic piece on adoption. . . . This site offers viewers an opportunity to add their own stories.") http://www.arts.arizona.edu/flax/; see also "Ex/Changing Families," by Flax and Ann Fessler, ("A web site and traveling collaborative installation which looks at issues of adoption and the social and political implications surrounding it.") link updated 2/24/06

Guyer, Carolyn, "Mother Millennia: Related Web Sites," http://mothermillennia.org/Related.html

Hoskin, Teri, et al, "Noon Quilt" (". . . an assemblage of patches submitted by writers from around the world. Together they form a fabric of noon-time impressions. The quilts were stitched over a period of approximately five months during 1998-1999.") http://trace.ntu.ac.uk/quilt/info.htm

Inspiring Stories of People Living with HIV and AIDS (international), http://gbgm-umc.org/cam/stories.html

Lederman, Russett, "American Views: Stories of the American Landscape" ("Emulating the fragmented, non-linear, montage-like construction found in the writings of the German cultural theorist, Walter Benjamin, this interactive work brings together a collection of private and public images, audio, ephemera and text from three "storytellers.") http://nmaa-ryder.si.edu/collections/exhibits/helios/newmedia/lederman/index.html ,

12/7/01

LeGrady, George, "Pockets Full of Memories," (in conjunction with an exhibition at the Centre Pompidou, April 18, 2001 to September 3, 2001. ". . . the latest installation work in a series begun in the early 1990s dealing with the topics of archive, cultural identities, audience contribution and technological processing of information. Two works that closely relate to this current project are "An Anecdoted Archive from the Cold War", first exhibited in 1993 at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco and "Equivalents II", first exhibited at the International Center of Photography, NY in 1994." from press release) http://www.mat.ucsb.edu/~g.legrady/glWeb/Projects/pfom2/pfom2.html; see also "An Annotated Archive from the Cold War" (CD-ROM), http://contactzones.cit.cornell.edu/artists/legrady.html, updated link 2/24/06; see also "Interface Metaphors & New Narratives in Interactive Media," http://www.c3.hu/scca/butterfly/Legrady/synopsis.html

"Migrating Memories" (MIME), ("Refugees and asylum seekers tell their stories. . . . What becomes important when you leave your country for one reason or another? Which objects, scents or pictures awaken memories? New inhabitants in Malmö, Tampere and Nottingham tell their stories." Trace press release) http://trace.ntu.ac.uk/mime/mime.htm

Museums and Millennium ("Museums from the four corners of the globe have collaborated on this unique Web site. The remarkable journey through their various visions provides new perspectives on some of the major existential issues facing humanity at the dawn of the third millennium. . . .The project Museums & Millennium is an initiative of the Musée de la civilisation in Québec. It is subsidized by the Canada Millennium Partnership Program and the ministère de la Culture et des Communications du Québec and is sponsored by the daily newspaper Le Soleil.") http://www.mumi.org/; see menu, http://www.mumi.org/en/index.htm; see also section "Memories of the Twentieth Century" (includes memories of love, family, war, school, aging, working), http://www.mumi.org/memoires/en/index.htm

Novak, Lorie, et al, "Collected Visions" ("Launched in May 1996, Collected Visions is a participatory website that explores the relationship between family photographs and memory.") http://cvisions.cat.nyu.edu/ (Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett recommended site, 5/12/01)

Partnoy family (Raquel, Alicia, and Ruth Irupe Sanabria) with Wilfried Agricola de Cologne, "Family Portrait," http://www.nmartproject.net/partnoy/portrait.htm, Wilfried Agricola de Cologne submitted link, 8/13/02

Powazek, Derek, creator of "The Fray" ("The {fray} universe is one big idea in three pieces. Fray.com (where you are) is about telling true personal stories on the web.Fray.org is about telling stories in real life. Fray.net is about selling stuff to fund our real world events. Three sites, one message: tell your stories. Welcome.") See his selections and personal stories by other contributors. http://fray.com

Szabo, Grant, and Jeff Beer, "Tracings in the Sand: Gulf War Veteran Resource Pages" "Tracings in the Sand is a section of the Gulf War Veteran Resource Pages for you to share the experiences of your service during the Gulf War, as well how that service has affected your life since your return. Civilians who served in the Persian Gulf region during the war are invited to submit their stories, too." http://www.gulfweb.org/tracings/

Women of the Waves (Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Service--Waves National Michigan Unit 32), http://www.womenofthewaves.com/

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