Nanette Wylde (nan@preneo.com) is an
artist whose works revolve around investigating human
understanding and perception. Many of Wylde's projects
are aimed at affecting peoples' perceptions of their
own thought processes as well as the world in which they
live. Her projects have a longstanding involvement with
personal reflection and the idea of discerning sanctioned
truths from individual reality.
Over the last several years, Wylde’s projects
have focused on interactive media as art. Wylde has recently
completed a Net art project called The
Daily Planet Interactive.
In this project, she specifically parodies information
delivery systems and (American) media culture. It is
an interactive Net art project that aims to foster a
new viewer outlook with respect to cultural identity
and accepted social practices that are one-sided. In
what follows, I provide an assessment of how the site’s
architectural arrangements contribute to Wylde’s
proposed mandate/ideas. Moreover, from information gathered
in my interview with the artist, I highlight issues that
manifest it self with respect to producing art on the
Internet. On this note, I discuss the significant attributes
of the computer/Internet (instantaneous distribution
of information, global accessibility, audience participation,
Net art as archived history or ‘timeless’,
artist/participant investment and site longevity) and
its impact as it is used to convey Wylde’s ideas
of truth, media culture and society.
The Daily Planet Interactive includes three newspaper
formats to choose from: Business, Metropolitan, and Tabloid.
Within each newspaper format a table indicates a series
of headers found inside the issue (ie: Entertainment,
Weather, Sports, etc.). The headlines are randomly generated
from information delivery systems (small community newspapers)
and run counter to the headers mentioned above. Moreover,
the content under each headline are displayed with a
multitude of X’s that bar viewer access to textual
information. Interactive elements such as The Global
Voice and Opinions respectively provide viewers the opportunity
to ask/answer questions including the opportunity to
freely speak on any subject in a forum. In addition,
random images of doll heads constitute visual representations
of the viewer participants.
Society constantly looks to the media for information
attainment and knowledge (whether information be ‘factual’ or
juicy gossip). In her web project, Wylde addresses the
ideas of society being consumed with the need to attain
information by partially obscuring information from the
viewer. Moreover, she continues to cleverly play with
viewer expectations for she does not allow the headlines
to run consistent with the newspaper format headings.
In both respects, the viewers’ expectations are
not met – they do not receive the information they
want. These ideas closely mimic Wylde’s underlying
theme of how the media controls/manipulates information
and only disseminates information they think should be
important to the masses.
It is also important to note Wylde’s tactic with
respect to further addressing the idea that the media
only distributes one-way communication to its viewers.
Newspapers can be perceived as a social construction
that propagates information for a specific purpose. Through
her web project viewers are afforded 'two-way communication'
where they are free to not only take in media headlines
and personal entries, but are also afforded the opportunity
to voice their questions and opinions. I personally enjoyed
the interactive aspect of ‘The Global Voice’ and ‘Opinions’...
I found myself consumed in this particular section of
the Net art project. I did insert a couple of entries
in the site and was surprised that my voice/opinion was
actually displayed instantaneously via the web. I felt
instant gratification that my voice had a potential to
be heard (many find it difficult to voice opinions and
concerns through television, newspapers, the radio, and
other forms of media, for media coverage is extremely
selective with regards to what they think the public
should know).
Another interesting aspect of Wylde’s Net art
project is her integrating random images of doll heads
as a visual means of representing people and their ideas.
I found it hard to disassociate one’s ideas/opinions
from the doll heads. Associating the doll heads with
the participants’ entries appeared humorous in
some respects, for the doll heads set forth connotations
of the viewer participants as lifeless puppets. On this
note, it can be gathered that people are puppets to the
media where they have a tendency to believe and act on ‘facts’ presented
by information delivery systems. By associating ideas/opinions
with doll heads, Wylde also appears to make light of
one’s ideas and opinions. What immediately comes
to mind is the idea that the media can manipulate actual
source material in ways in which the public would read
it differently. It is also significant to note that the
doll head images randomly change while each entry remains
constant. In this respect, it can be gathered that the
entries are issues, ideas and comments of not just one
person, but are the voices many. |