Mark Amerika's latest online project, PHON:E:ME, is part online novel, part electronic symphony. A nonlinear Web operetta of sorts.
Or, as Amerika himself puts it, it is "perhaps the first MP3 concept album ever made."
The mysterious, oddly engaging PHON:E:ME ("phone me" or "phony me" -- you decide) was commissioned by Gallery 9, the online exhibition space of Minneapolis' prestigious Walker Art Center. The piece went live Wednesday and is available for free download, but a Shockwave plug-in is required.
"Imagine spoken-word criti-fiction meets DJ chill room music," Amerika says of his creation.
"For people who like reading alternative literature but also get off on electronic music and have at one time or another wondered how the Internet might create an environment for these disciplines to merge, I'd say PHON:E:ME should interest anyone who's serious about using the Net to create art and locate audiences."
Visitors entering the PHON:E:ME site are confronted with a placid blue screen on which simple green geometric shapes glide and seem to divide and multiply, like germs. Either RealAudio or MP3 technology is used to get the roughly 47-minute soundtrack rolling. A synthesized heartbeat, an answering machine announcement, electronic blips, and sped-up and slowed down human voices are just some of the random noises that flow together in a surprisingly non-cacophonous, even musical, manner.
Simultaneously, text featuring funky phrases, such as "sacred technician" and "VR cum," flashes periodically, while the warning "network congestion: still-life with artificially constructed psychobabble" glides constantly across the screen.
If visitors drag their cursors across the screen and swirl it leisurely, text appears, presenting short vignettes starring a cast of characters ranging from the Network Conductor (who appears to be the protagonist), to the New Media Economist, the Web Jockey, and The Hearing Ear Man. One vignette features the Network Conductor giving a live performance in an art gallery/party space. Another traces the same character meeting with the New Media Economist, who gives pointers on how to become a "net.star."
Amerika himself is something of a "Net star," best known as the man behind the critically acclaimed online publishing venture Alt-X, and the author of the popular hypertext novel Grammatron.
"I think Mark's work is important and emblematic Net work, and I was eager to help support his newest project," said Steve Dietz, founding director of New Media Initiatives at the Walker Art Center.
"One aspect of PHON:E:ME that interests me in particular is its focus on sound," Dietz said.
"For me, the synesthesia of interacting with and reading the Shocked texts while listening to a soundtrack that interweaves what you are reading with what you may have read in other Amerika works with who-knows-what-else shifts toward an immersive experience that is quite compelling."
Those seeking a nice, neat plot should look elsewhere, though. Even the topsy-turvy hypertext path of Grammatron seems easy to follow compared to PHON:E:ME, which appears to be more about Amerika's own experience and experimentation as a self-proclaimed "techno-shaman" than anything else.
And that's a fair reading according to Amerika, who says his inspiration was simply to "break down the genre mentality that drives most conventional art practice." He sees PHON:E:ME as mining the possibilities of what he calls narrative remixes that users can conduct themselves.
To understand how Amerika defines techno-shamanism is to understand why he created PHON:E:ME.
"I think it's rapidly becoming the role of the digital artist to act as a kind of creative filterer who surfs the electrosphere, absorbing all of the cultural information he or she can muster," he said. "Once that information is absorbed, the artist can then recompose the various bits into a unique remix that, once redistributed back on the Net, has a kind of tonic effect on the culture at large."
Dietz supports Amerika's vision wholeheartedly, and thinks that abstract works of Net art like PHON:E:ME require a new way of looking and perceiving. The mix, it seems, is the message.
"It is human nature to think categorically, which is part of the reason, I think, that Net work is so hard to follow for some," said Dietz. "For me, the network emphasizes connections and de-emphasizes distinctions. It is often most interesting in the interstices."
"Digital technologies enable -- or, as some may argue, incite -- the interpenetration of all sorts of boundaries: between private and public, life and art, biological and artificial, close and far, real and virtual," Dietz said.
"Artists will inevitably use digital media to sketch in the neutral zones of these boundaries, and the Walker is committed to enabling these efforts."
