Research

This is just an excerpt from Paul D.Miller (DJ Spooky)'s Rebirth of a Nation that was performed live in various locations. I found this example from the book "New Media Art" by Mark Tribe / Reena Jana. Unfortunately when I took the book home from the library I realised it was in Italian, but fortunately (thanks to Italian TV channels in Malta) I can read Italian and understand it!

The authors say that most New Media artists are criticized for now being familiar with historic art movements that have contributed to New Media such as Dadaism and Popart. Most of the time this is untrue, and this is reflected in some works of New Media artists, in this case Paul D.Miller's Rebirth of a Nation(2002) that was a live performance when he remixes D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation, whilst assembling improvised sound.

In the same book I have also come across "Brandon" by Shu Lea Cheang, that is a true story about Teena Brandon who was a twenty one year old girl who was raped and killed after trying to be passed on as a man. (I have also seen this interpreted as a film in "Boys don't cry" (1999).

(The following in an English translation from the book)

The artist Shu Lea Cheang was commissioned by the Guggenheim to produce a web-based work of art that expored Teena Brandon's story in an experimental manner, non-linear, in order to communicate the fluidity and ambiguity of sex and identity in contemporary societies.

"Shu Lea Cheang's 1998 work "Brandon" is a multifaceted web project that uses the nonlinear and participatory nature of the Internet as a means to explore and illuminate Brandon Teena's tragic story. From the opening image of morphing gender signifiers, Cheang propels the viewer into a probing investigation of human sexuality. It is an inquiry that utilizes hyperlinked images of a disembodied human form, once-live chat rooms on the subject of crime and punishment, and graphic moving images in order to illuminate the wide-reaching effect of Brandon's life and death. Exploiting the highly mutable "skin" of the Internet, Cheang reveals how this emerging virtual environment enables individuals to inhabit and play with different gender roles and characters. A prime example of "cyberfeminism," Brandon utilizes technology as a means to break down social assumptions about gender in both the realm of technology and in society at large." Guggenheim(accessed: 2012)

Unfortunately the website does not seem to be available online, however I found it to be relevant to my body of work since it deals with true stories, interactive imagery and non-linearity.

Yet another website that my programmer found and that reminds me of my work is this one and this time rather than in Italian, it's in German. I believe it is a preview of various artists / student works. Each pictures can be dragged around and can be clicked to direct to specific works. I really like the white space however in my case I fear it might not work because it uncovers the somewhat ugly borders of the videos.