memerememberme

memerememberme is an interactive web installation


specifications

  • date 2019
  • media web HTML5/CSS/JS installation
  • size interactive size + duration varies with browser, device, + client
  • exhibition history exhibited as part of the Philadelphia Digital Fringe

description


If you’d asked me 10 years ago, I would have said humanity is going to do a good job with this. If we connect all these people together, they are such wonderful people they will get along.

I was wrong.

— Sir Tim Berners-Lee

memerememberme is a multi-media meditation on the devolution of the Internet, the weaponization of the meme, and the ascendancy of dragnet surveillance capitalism at the dawn of the fourth decade of the World Wide Web—with a dash of art historical visual punning thrown in to keep it light.

Poor souls and internet trolls who may lack a sense of humor or awareness of metaphor should be advised this work is sloppy drunk on irony. The liberal use of offensive imagery and text does not imply endorsement of racist, homophobic, or sexist organizations, disorganizations, or heads of state. It simply implies we’re all fucked.

memerememberme uses scripted randomization—of audio elements, visual content, links—to develop a unique experience per each visit. True randomization means one might encounter annoying repetition, satisfying calm, depressing drama, uplifting humor, or possibly satisfying drama, annoying humor, depressing calm, or uplifting repetition, or even dramatic uplift, repetitive satisfaction, humorous annoyance, or calming depression.

Like Borges’ Library, Calvino’s Ersilia, or the very internet it critiques, it is astronomically unlikely that any two experiences of memerememberme will be identical, though all possible variations are technically finite.

At the risk of lifting the curtain on the wizard, then, the schemata presented below reveal the structure of the site and introduce some iconography—including content originating with the author. By “originating” we mean content manufactured by the author (even if such manufacture is derived from memetic content), rather than “simply” found and conceptually transformed in the manner of memes.

Which of course means that there is much content that does NOT originate with the author. All rights to such original content (visual, audio, script) remain with original authors, and are cited in the head section of each html or css document at the website, as well as linked directly in the credits page. What this author claims right to is the transformative juxtapositions stripped bare by the schemata below—these are to memerememberme as the Green Box is to the Large Glass.


schemata

Common elements for book i chapters

  • Audio: Drum loops, bird twitter loops randomized among 25 field recordings
  • Scripts: Fadeout-fadein, randomizing links, randomizing audio, randomizing text, randomizing background image, randomizing iframe content, custom cursor, in-app force, image swapping, erase-and-reveal effect, EaselJS object drag effect, video explosion effect, falling leaf effect, rotating cube effect, cursor following effect, cursor drag effect, Twitter feed embed

Common elements for book ii chapters

  • Audio: Drum loops, random sound effects including sirens, animal calls, machine loops, ambient static, and politically charged loops including “invention of the internet” and “send her back” rally chant memes.
  • Scripts: Fadeout-fadein, randomizing links, randomizing audio, randomizing text, randomizing background image, randomizing iframe content, custom cursor, in-app force, threejs interactives, HTML5/CSS/JS interactives