User:Marlon/selfdirectedtext

Self Directed Research Essay

Abstract

This text examines my (recent) work, projects that started out as a fascination with Internet culture. A news story gone viral, a meme or an online community. Researching each of these subjects led to a collection of images, files or comments, extracted from the web. By placing them in a different context or environment I have tried to confront myself and others with how the Internet has changed the way we find/share (personal) information and entertainment.

Introduction

During the last two years of my bachelor Graphic Design at ArtEZ in Arnhem, the focus of my work has primarily been on the Internet and how it has changed the way we find and share information. Internet culture in its many aspects has been the source, or research material, of my projects. News stories that go viral and become online memes, the typographic elements of .NFO files – informative texts added to illegal downloads – or diagrams designed to represent peer-to-peer networks.

This texts examines my most recent work that, while still strongly rooted in graphic design and often resulting in a non-digital, printed outcome, tries to approach critically digital culture. Most of my work focuses on a smaller aspect of it, but still tries to raise questions about the topic as a whole.

Recent work

Pirate Bay Archive

This project was inspired by (and uses) an XML-file of 75MB, created by Karel Bilek, that consists of around 1,6 million torrent files that at one point appeared on The Pirate Bay. I created a website that randomly displays one item from this list. When a users clicks on the item, a link makes it possible to start downloading the file. When the page is reloaded, a new file-name is displayed, and the background colour of the website turns pink or green. The colours refer to the skulls displayed on The Pirate Bay that show you when a download is trusted (pink) or vip (green). ASCII art, an image made up of printable characters, of The Pirate Bay logo at the top remains unchanged.

Karel Bilek spent half a year "downloading" and compiling the almost two million magnet links that make up the The Pirate Bay, a website that offers these links to its users to enable the file sharing of mostly copyrighted and/or illegal content. Bilek, prepared for a worse case scenario where The Pirate Bay might be closed down forever, stored the information in a compressed file of only 75mb in size. That would make it possible to recreate The Pirate Bay if necessary.

The file is available for anyone who wishes to download it. The archive gives access to files on the computers of other users, but doesn't contain any content itself. Just like The Pirate Bay. My version of the archive randomly selects and then displays one item from the list, which could be “Windows XP crack 100% working (NO VIRUS)” or the more mysterious “b-grudge.avi”. This would give users access to an enormous amount of content, but without the 'search option' it loses almost all its functionality. It works in an addictive way: there is a sudden need to keep reloading the page to find a more obscure or absurd download. Once you've pressed F5 to refresh the previous title disappears. It is not unlikely that you'll start pressing that refresh button repeatedly, finding a great download when you've just replaced it with a new one.

The Pirate Bay Archive is one of the outcomes of a trimester spent researching topics related to (illegal) downloading, the websites and tools that facilitate this and the communities that share the content.

.NFO

Pirated content is often accompanied by a text-only .NFO file, with useful information about the downloaded file, like subtitle information and installation instructions. They're an interesting cross between a straight-forward readme file and a personalized business card, used to inform you of the release group behind the content. Their 90's aesthetics, often including ASCII-art, show their origin in the warez scene (The Scene), where .NFO files were used as a sort of press release.

Back in the early PC days information contained in the .NFO files was both to inform the user, but also for release groups to list their BBS phone numbers - hoping to attract a larger group of users and content. Using .NFO files added only a few bytes to a release, as file size was critically important in dial-up days.

Not a finished project or work, the .NFO file has been one of my recent research topics. It relates to my peer-to-peer project: .NFO files are a prominent tradition within the file sharing subculture. In the past the limited technical possibilities set boundaries for how the file looked and although the software used to create these files has developed significantly, the overall look of an .NFO file has remained the same, all due to its nostalgic value.

As a graphic designer, it is interesting to see how the creators of these files manage to construct something great with very little: a limited toolbox of white on black or black on white symbols is used to make impressive pieces of work. Though most of the .NFO files are kept clean and simple, some show elaborate drawings and typography – the files have changed from a necessity to a form of expression. It is the "corporate identity" of individuals or groups of people that manifest themselves online.

Peer-to-Peer-to-Peer-to-Peer

My most recent work, Peer-to-Peer-to-Peer-to-Peer, is a small installation piece. It consists of A4-size papers placed on a white wall. Printed on each page is a diagram of a peer-to-peer network or system. The peers, or users, in the network are mostly represented as computer desktops (or laptops), arranged together to form a circle, square or other shape. Lines and arrows symbolize the connections between the 'nodes'. In newer images, the nodes resemble human figures caught in a web of endless connections. Simultaneously the design of the images goes from simple, black and white diagrams to shiny Web 2.0 graphics. The printed pages overlap, connecting the peers of one diagram to those of another, forming a larger network of peer-to-peer networks.

I used a script that would search for the terms 'P2P', 'peer-to-peer' via images.google.com and automatically download any file related to the query. This resulted in a small collection of which only a few images were deleted, images of pears and non-diagrams. Each image was enlarged and printed seperately, in black and white, on a piece of paper. Starting with one image placed in the middle of the wall, I started connecting the diagrams – overlapping one peer in a diagram with that of another.

Peers can form a network of nodes in which they share data peer-to-peer, without any central coordination. This peer-to-peer system was developed in 1993, but became more popular when online file sharing services, like Napster, appeared. Currently the term "peer-to-peer" is at the height of its popularity, something you see reflected in the striking amount of images visualising the system that circulate the Web. Though the system stays the same, its use is in constant development. This "evolution" can be observed when looking at these images: the older images are smaller in file-size, with low-tech graphics depicting desktop computers, while the newer versions illustrate the increasing social impact of the peer-to-peer system.

Older work

PSYOP

The internet is, of course, extremely repetitive. This becomes even more obvious when following news events online. Not only can you view the official articles on newspaper websites, there's the possibility to constantly refresh blogs, forums, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and others for the latest update. I have finished two previous projects that investigate this aspect of the Web.

In 2009 two Colorado parents set up an elaborate hoax, pretending their son had taken off in a helium filled gas balloon. The news spread like wildfire, and I followed it live via a variety of websites. A large number of people had a lot of different things to say about the situation, from speculation to jokes to poems. The balloon boy became an internet meme.

It seemed as if anyone with access to a keyboard wanted to contribute to the story, so I started collecting. A lot of the same sentiments or jokes were expressed via different online platforms. I started to focus on just the comments made by a large variety of users on one forum in particular. These comments became the content of a book of poems (PSYOP), each chapter focusing on a specific amount of time during the incident. The poems, or comments, printed with a fancy font on offwhite paper, tell the story.

"In July 2011, Richard Heene auctioned the balloon, selling it to Mike Fruitman, an Aurora, Colorado businessman, for $2,502.
Heene said that proceeds would go to victims of the March 2011 Sendai earthquake and tsunami." (Wikipedia)

Tsunami by proxy

This fascination with virality in relation to the World Wide Web, led to another extensive Google search of images. The subject: an earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster in Japan. I selected the most common images that accompanied articles, blogs or tweets about the tsunami, even if those images were not taken in Japan at all. (Natural) disasters are visual stories and the images that most accurately capture the imagination of the viewer are very popular online.

The images were printed on postcards, as they often refer to a specific location. In this case not only to the actual site of the disaster, but – by adding the URL on the back of the card – to the source of the image as well. Placing these cards on the floor in a chronological order symbolises the viral spread of online pictures, while at the same time a pattern is created that shows the course of a natural disaster.