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.