View at: http://www.artic.edu/~tvazqu/tvpages/Personals
(best viewed in the most current version of Netscape with a high-speed connection)
The concept for PERSONALS was inspired by a recent call from Mute magazine for literary works incorporating words that are believed to trigger Echelon (more on Echelon in a moment...) While my intention was not to submit a piece specifically for this call, I was inspired to create a self-generating, durational text piece for the web that would employ Echelon "spook words" as its primary word set. In so doing, I trusted that the process of recontextualizing this remarkable set of words in an innocuous, open-ended narrative would unravel the irony, humor, absurdity and unease that are contained in this most maligned set of words.
The open structure of PERSONALS at once personalizes and transforms in cyberspace a set of characters whose primary identities were originally designed to serve as made-for-cyberspace fictions (screen names, passwords, code words, acronyms, etc.) In the realm of entertainment, many of these characters have duplicate personalities as cartoons and other entertainment industry constructions. Randomness in word combination is a primary device of revelation in this piece. It mimics the sense of randomness one feels when confronted by the sheer length and breadth of the actual lists of Echelon "spook words". With up to five self-refreshing frames on each page, possible word combinations multiply exponentially.
PERSONALS makes the (mostly) passive viewer merely a witness to an automated, multifaceted process that unfolds before his/her eyes, and largely outside of his/her reach. Outside of the cursory clicks of the mouse that are needed to advance from one page to the next, the narrative outcomes are not impacted. With the element of interactivity frustrated, this activity is designed to be as reflective as possible. The desired viewing paradigm is meant to be more like a film than a video game.
The subtext of PERSONALS concerns the reality of electronic surveillance. The viewer has most certainly just engaged in an activity that is subject to the surveillance mechanism it sets out to critique. And this happens as it does in real life -- with no pop-up warning screens, beeps or error messages. PERSONALS attempts to force the viewer to interrogate the act of "surfing" through any number of random sites on the web.