Mark Amerika’s How To Be An Internet Artist constitutes a differential text that perturbs the reader because of its rich collection of multiple non-consistent writings. There is no plot that runs over the whole e-book, but every section seems as if it is completely separate from the rest of the book. Through this style, Amerika implies that this is what people, who usually surf the internet, should expect to face. When a person surfs the internet, s/he moves from one site to another without a consistency of the topics or even the value of the information sometimes. The existence of “Post-Adolescence,” “Gertrude Stein,” and “Untitled” in the book proves the possibility that the internet user may come across pornography. Amerika’s electronic art book marks the beginning of new media art through introducing a multifaceted view of scenes, exploiting digital art scenes. The book tells about a variety of subjects, including interactive storytelling and net art.
In this e-book, the content does not match the title of the book whereas the reader discovers that s/he is reading about multiple issues. Notably, Amerika remixes many topics in the book. He wants to expose that these are the main issues and topics, which are easily reachable and exist in the public domain. In “Remixing The ‘I’,” he touches some of that issues and implies that this trend becomes the public’s concern, especially when writing stories about the disclosure of new sexual trends that accompany the digital age. In this section, Amerika does not want to include these topics in his writing to discuss them so his work seems seminal or vulgar, but exposing them in the e-book implies the degeneration that reached most websites through dealing with these topics and making them the main source of income. Another implied issue in Amerika’s style through writing this e-book is the exposure of the loss of literariness; some literary works lose their artistic purposes when they are reduced through digitalizing them for the sake of marketing online. That process degrades ethics and art and creates cheap and confusing literature ultimately.
I think it is interesting that you tie the style of the book to the experience of surfing the web. I did find myself confused and disoriented, like I sometimes am when I am looking for a topic I don’t understand on the web. How much of that do you think you can have in a fairly traditional, non-interactive, non-hypertext book?
Jed, I think the book introduces us to this idea; it creates much confusion, especially when we move from one topic to another one that all of them are different from each other. Amerika’s style in introducing the texts and information is somehow similar to the way we surf the internet. We just got confused when do not understand the topics because they seem disconnected from each other.
I liked how you relate reading Amerika’s book to the experience of browsing the internet, i haven’t thought about it this way. Yet, even within every section it is hard to grasp his ideas. The only reasonable justification that i can think of is that Amerika wants to complicate the fact that anyone can become an internet artist.
Ziyad, interesting, a good idea! If you think about it from this point of view, it is true that not everyone can use the internet very well. Some people sit long hours in front of laptops, just opening any hyperlink they may face without serious aim for their search. Then they come across multiple topics that are disconnected from each other.
Think about the portrait of oneself that would be generated by a random partial search of your emails, tweets, instant messages, and Facebook posts. Is there one author? Many? Is the story clear, with a singular narrative thread? perhaps …
This is actually an excellent starting point. In fact, when posing over internet, whether social websites or formal, there is no joint thread in our writings. Every story is separate from the other in case there is a story. Sometimes there is no story and the posts seem random. So Amerika’s e-book is resonating these facts.