With this second attempt, I used the site 'Gifcities', the prompt word I chose was 'Stick', which resulted in this gif as one of the results
This GIF drew my interest due to the striking visual style and charm, very distinctive of most amateur web animation of the early 2000's. (dating to 02-May-2003 on its index)
Once clicked, the gif took me to an index page, then leading to this homepage displayed above, dated as being created sometime in 2004 or before.
The design is very noticeably garish and non-professional, relying solely on simple text and links with highly saturated colour.
Despite this, I believe this webpage holds a lot of charm, the lack of professionalism just shows that the author, despite their lack of experience, still has a lot of passion and decided to make a mark on the internet anyway, not expecting many to see their website.
Wanting to purely express yourself on the internet without wanting viewership or an audience is practically unheard of within the modern internet, as most of the incentive advertised within social media is to make money or receive fame, not as an outlet to represent and express yourself whilst humbly communicating amongst others.
Due to the motive to conglomerate all social medias and platforms into one standard, spaces for this kind of expression are hard to find. In an internet where once designated forums and webpage communities would chat amongst each other independently, big companies now incentivise appealing to everyone and thus satisfying no one, grouping practically everyone online to just a few heavily corporatized sites.
A notable example of this being a negative influence is its impact on online art communities. Within the early days of the web, most artists had their very own websites on which they'd display their art, shared through webrings and art forums. This would later develop into art social media sites, which would further the engagement of an audience to an artists work. However, in the modern state of the internet, most designated art sites are abandoned with a waning userbase, with most online artists hosting their presence on the larger mainstream websites such as twitter or Instagram to hopefully farm more engagement. However, due to the oversaturation of users and a website not built for promoting art, incentivising short and consistent work instead of works which take long lengths of time to complete, many artists struggle to find a platform for their art unless they push themself to make content to an exhausting degree to please the algorithm.
Due to the uniqueness of the username had by the creator of the website, I was able to find a YouTube channel attached to it.
This is an interesting insight into his life, seeing his love for videogames and caring for animals, humanising the faceless person behind the screen.
This was the second gif that caught my eye, due to it containing the character 'Pucca', Pucca is a show I loved as a child so I was curious on what the page could be about.
Clicking the gif lead to a blank pink page with sprawling text introducing the webpage
The pink page then redirected to this home page, a personal website for a woman named Rachel, decorated fully with pink glittery gifs and banners.
The website however wasn't fully archived, probably due to low viewership. Because of this, only the main page remains, with all of the branching pages (Bios, interests, fan links, etc) are all unarchived and redirect to scam or inaccessible websites, leaving a majority of this website lost to time.
This gif caught my eye due to it's bizarre message and execution, seeming like its an urgent warning, alerting of people being paranoid for unreasonable grounds. Immediately, this struck me as either as belonging to conspiracy theorist site or a conservative site.
Immediately after clicking the gif, my predictions reigned true as I was redirected to this page, a garishly patriotic webpage sprawling with American flag iconography and advocating for the use of firearms.
The main page follows more of the same visual ques, using heavily clashing colours and heavily digitally altered images. Advertising itself as 'The Thinking Mans Page', it hosts many pages on conservative politics of its time, firearms, etc.
What really stuck with me about this page other than it's visual style, is it's low viewer count. When reading the visit counter at the bottom of each page of this website, all the pages are archived as having a viewership less than ten, in one case only being one, meaning the sole viewer of the page was the archival bot, not even a real person. The possibility that I was the only living person to view this page aside rom the author makes me wonder about the other websites and creations made out there in the world which are yet to be seen by anyone at all. This is why I appreciate the work of the Internet Archive, as it archives the internet freely, not depending on popularity, meaning that anything gets a chance of being remembered, no matter how banal or strange.
This gif caught my eye initially due to the cute dog graphic, but the message caught me of guard so I found humorous.
Once clicked, it redirected to this page, sweetly dedicated to the author's dog, page themed with a bone patterned background and links to pet webrings and communities.
The main page shares this visual motif, showing the creators clear love for their dogs.
What I love about this page, is the level of personal touch within it's design. The creator puts their entire heart and soul out for the world to see, listing all their interests, passions, hobbies and connections, showing the world who they are.
Lastly, this gif caught my eye due to the pure surrealist nature of it, a disembodied bobbing head of what looks like someone's school photo.
When clicked, it led to this odd but sweet page, telling a short poem about how the authour and their close friend will never part and will be friends for life. The simple kitschy charm of this webpage not only comes from its endearing sincerity, but also its bizarre design, animating inhuman movement to static images of their disembodied heads.
As well as this, the page downloaded a .mid file, which can be listened to here.
(note: this audio, when the website was still online, would've been regularly played through the browser, but due to the nature of the archival of the site it downloaded it instead)
This level of effort within programming this site shows the creator's dedication and passion for telling the world of their close friendship.
When navigating to the main home page of the website, I was unfortunately met which a mass of dead links, unable for whatever reason to be archived properly. This left a huge chunk of the website undiscernible, it's original appearance lost to time.
Cueva de las Manos, Santa Cruz, Argentina
The innate urge to prove to others that u were here is primitive and ingrained within the human experience. Art and creative drive is something that makes us human, and that allows us to make our own marks within society proving that we once lived to the ones that come after us.
This is an element I definitely realised whilst researching and exploring the 'WWWILFing' mini brief, as time and time again I saw how many wanted to immortalise themselves online, usually in an unrealistic manner, only choosing to document the best of themselves.
The term 'chronosonder' I believe summarises my experience well, the phrase meaning to gain awareness of the fact that those who came before you held full, fulfilling and eventful lives. Although the period of which most of these websites originated from wasn't that long ago in perspective, considering the evolution technology and the internet itself has had since, the infostructure and culture of this era seems alien in comparison. Seeing that in contrast with the heavily earnest biographies and welcome sites makes you realise the person behind the site made it purely out of passion, unintended for professionalism, a sense of down-to-earth sincerity and humanity which isn't promoted within most platforms on the internet today
As well as this, navigating these spaces, once hosted and maintained by their respected owners, now completely vanished in their original form, only miraculously archived left me feeling somewhat sad, thinking about how many peoples important memories, experiences or creations held online have either been forgotten by the world or have completely vanished from site closure and 'bit rot'.
'Bit rot' is a phenomenon I came across frequently within this mini brief, this refers to the gradual degradation of digital data, most notably in the form of data files, such as digitised photos, videos, music, etc. This gradual wearing often presents itself as files gradually losing quality, showing 'artifacting' or pixelation. This mark of age I find visually interesting, as many associate the internet as being immortalising, something that remembers and maintains everything to post online. However, this is far from the case, as data files, websites, etc all age, decay and die too, much as anything does within the physical world. I find image artifacting very unconventionally beautiful, an imperfection of a system thought to be infallible, as said by Brian Eno, 'Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty about a new medium will surely become its signature.'
Its because of these aspects, I would hope to emphasise the flaws within digital mediums, such as artifacting and link rot, and see the beauty within them and the passage of time.
Originally, I had planned to conclude this other attempt at the 'WWWILFing' mini brief with another try at an observational digital collage, inspired by each individual webpage. However, due to time concerns, I had to shelf the idea, however I would be interested in returning to it.
