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One of those sort of chintzy web-novel thingies. It involves the sordid internal dialogue of a mother and "the baby" as she, the mother, ambulates about her apartment performing various domestic type tasks. The structural system of little footnote-y links that elaborate little bits of the main body of the story remind me of reading Infinite Jest. Most entertainingly the woman refers to her baby as "the baby" and "the baby" is pretty much more interesting than her. It seems, based upon my chosen links, that net.art of the visual variety has very limited appeal to me. In fact I have decided that it is rather fucking obnoxious and that people should refrain from producing any more of it. Story/writing/narative/shit-poetry based stuff is OK I guess.

This very, very recently available app by PNCA prof Stephen Slappe is another example of the continued cultural continuum of the spatial fourth dimension in art and culture Using an actual Google street view camera to facilitate production of an extensive non-linear narrative project, EIGHT transforms the app into a portal to several inter-related 'dimensions'

An echo of early net.art initiatives, the contemporary INC was established in Amsterdam in 2004, in effort to extend research "to design, activism, art, philosophy, political theory and urban studies and [it] is not confined to the Internet alone...the INC maintains that the Internet can only be understood at the conjuncture of these various fields and lines of inquiry." This site is an amazing resource for research and reflection on new and emergent network cultures. The politics of search engines, Wikipedia, social networks, bitcoin, Internet of Things, Gaming and more! The ongoing conferences are backed with anthologies of related essays, most made available for free download on their site. Institute of Network Cultures "Publications" n.d. accessed April 25, 2014. http://networkcultures.org/wpmu/portal/publications/

"When I was learning how to write in grade school, I noticed that all my teachers wrote with near-identical handwriting on the chalkboard...I realized that we were being taught to write in a specific font." The statement here is from series by contemporary artist Jesse England. This is not net.art, but an interesting variant on "remediation," or a perverse post-digital gesture pointing to non-obvious connections between new and old modes of communication design. England, Jesse. "Learn to write in Different Fonts: Jesse England" Accessed February 14, 2014. http://jesseengland.net/index.php?/project/learn-to-write-in-different-fonts/

This 5 minute edit of a digital ethnographic study by Michael Wesch is an excellent visual introduction to particular techno-social affordances and constraints of the Internet, echoing some ideas from lecture about hypertext and is useful to understanding the broader technical behind-the-scenes through the first decade of internet--- a helpful supplement to thinking about net.art and other forms of production online "The Machine is Us/ing Us (Final Version)" Youtube video, 4:34. Posted by Michael Wesch, March 8, 2007. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLlGopyXT_g

RTMark is a digital platform that is used to post and fund "projects" to be completed both online, and in the "real world". Many of the projects act as subtle jabs at commercialism, standardized education, and other social and political issues. The "past projects" tab acts as an exhibition of projects completed, giving details into what the purpose of the piece was, and how it was beneficial. RTMark uses the internet to form a community that is geared towards creating and completing projects, transferring funds and creating disturbances and awareness within society. "RTMark" Trademark 2000 www.rtmark.com

This is a page I came across whilst frustratedly slogging about on one of those rabbit-hole-look-there-are-so-many-fucking-links-all-over-that-move-and-change-colors-and-shit-aren't-we-so-disruptive-type-sites. It is rather unremarkable in most ways, but I found it a semi-welcome respite from the rest of the site. Like many other sites of this era, it is a web poetry message board of sorts that relies on user generated content, namely semi-anonymous bits'o "creative writing" that are supposedly prompted by way of the writer viewing one of three pairings of images. Some users attempt to narrativise the images to varying degrees of success, and some people write about fucking jars of peanut butter, as in literally humping said jar. Like many such collections of user generated avant-poetry it becomes increasingly difficult to suss out which pieces have an actual considered conceptual core, and which are just word diarrhea. Nevertheless, I found some of them sort of charming. Also of note is that there are mail-to links associated with each writing that are supposedly linked to the writers email account. This seems bizarre in a present where such personal information is closely guarded, hidden from the masses of web-weirdos and spambots.

Write or Die is a browser based application that encourages the user to set goals when writing and achieve them, or else. The interface is relatively simple: the user defines how long they would like to write, the speed at which they intend to write, and the consequences for maintaining or dropping below these parameters. There are three basic modes: Reward, Stimulus, and Consequence. Reward mode displays positive reinforcement for completing your goals by displaying photos you happen to like in whatever frequency you think would best suit your Pavlovian response. Stimulus mode supplies nice, calming backgrounds and sounds as you maintain your words per minute, but if you drop below, they disappear. You can also include your own music, if you want the extra motivation to keep it playing. Finally, there is consequence mode. This mode punishes the user for dropping below quota by turning the screen bright, angry colors, emitting a horrible, grating tone, and finally slowly dissolving the vowels in your completed text. This mode isn't for the faint of heart. Supply your own corporal punishment! Good art hurts!

That sounds really terrifying and awesome. What would be difficult would be determining the sweet spot between pressure to work and a mental breakdown.

Tailorized Taylorism!

Here's a great essay by Carrie Lambert-Beatty on Parafiction. She discusses the "Nikeplatz" work we saw in class along with several other works by various artists. Parafictional endeavors negotiate context collapse as strategic asset for opening up dialogue and debate. As noted in class, this particular genre of contemporary art has many similar goals and intentions as Critical Design. Carrie Lambert-Beatty "Make-Believe: Parafiction and Plausibility" October 2009 129, 51-84

Drexel University's Essay Writing Strategies did a great job illustrating in Layman's terms a simple step by step procedure for writing a paper. I found a ton of Youtube videos and instructional writings on how to be a good writer, but they were boring and difficult to engage with. I felt this spoke directly to start with a "shitty first draft" and gave great pointers on formatting, revising, and even just getting started. The author of this list of strategies provided thorough insight into questions you should be asking yourself to make a solid, structured essay. For example, after getting the "shitty first draft" out of the way, the author suggests beginning the first draft and to do so, it's helpful to start asking yourself questions about your topic. From there, those questions can help point you in the direction of your thesis where the author offers: "Work on the big picture first - don't get too committed early on. Plan to experiment and try completely different versions of your essay. Don't be afraid to toss out drafts that aren't working." Although these seem straightforward, and this pertains to application essays, I think they're great pointers for any paper developing and prove to be helpful for this essay on net.art. Drexel University, "Essay Writing Strategies." Last modified 2014. Accessed March 3, 2014. http://drexel.edu/fellowships/applying/essay/strategies/.

Along with my other post, this one goes hand in hand with that. I felt that including this one as well would be good and would help elaborate in the stages of prewriting and preparing for the first draft. I know out of experience and from others that simply getting started can be terrifying and quite frustrating. This link offers that aid for getting started and offers simple solutions like the basic structure for developing a solid paper. Prewriting exercises such as "brainstorming, free-writing, listing and clustering" act as the catalyst for developing ideas, or points and ideas at least that can be expanded later. As applied to this essay, you might start with different net.art pieces that you saw, made an impact, and then further refine and discover richer ideas you want to develop a paper around. It's helpful not only for this class but for writing in general! University of Maryland University College, "Prewriting and Outlining." Last modified 2014. Accessed March 3, 2014. http://www.umuc.edu/writingcenter/writingresources/prewriting_outlining.cfm.

This article written by John Crabb is about the sixth senses, hyper-space, of corse the fourth dimension. The article is a nice parallel to the Meta Reality reading because is discusses C.H. Hiltion and sources the The Fourth Dimension and Non-Euclidean Geometry in Modern Art. The article explains the hows the ideas of the fourth dimension are not only associated with visual are, but also liturater. Giving examples of authors such as HP Lovecraft, and Lewis Carroll incorporating the ideas of the fourth dimension into their work. Crabb, John . "Notes on the Fourth Dimension | HiLobrow." HiLobrow RSS. http://hilobrow.com/2012/05/24/notes-on-the-fourth-dimension/

Because why stop at distorting just images. Why not how we speak as well?