absurd.org
The site at http://www.absurd.org comes with a log that shows which of its parts were added in each year from the end of December 1996 until the end of 1999, about 10 or 12 a year. The author (or authors) claims to be a Martian and even provides pictures of himself and his family. Whoever they are, they are flashy coders, pushing Javascript and Java in dramatic and original ways, though they are happy as well to provide “toys” and even a typomatic program to help learn typing. Several concerns run through these pages:

1. There is a defense of a certain vision of the Web against commercialization and ignoring of standards in the “browser war.”

2. There is an extensive polemic against image heavy web design that has little regard for text and a counter-aesthetic (“design annihilation”) proclaimed of destruction and assault on the viewer; some of this is reminiscent of Dada anti-art proclamations and activities. (It is linked by the dadamonster site— http://www.angelfire.com/zine/dadamonster/dadamonster.html)

3. There are the personal issues of addiction (to email and to information) and loss of control over the machine because of unruly and pernicious programs. Indeed, you enter the site by experiencing a “core meltdown” in which dozens of windows big and small running scripted processes pop open and overrun the screen. (Some very similar browser-run-wild effects without the text and message of absurd can also been found at http://www.fakeshop.org.) Even the little java drawing programs provided simulate artificial life in taking a “seed” from the viewer and then running on their own. Throughout the site, extensive amounts of text are “corrupted” typographically as in the sample at the left, and modulate in and out of technobabble and rant.

4. It is full of cyborg imagery which develops the fear of becoming part machine as we pursue our addiction; the imagery is pervasive and sometimes very large, strong, and, shall we say, not pleasant. The cyborg faces are particularly unsettling and reminiscent of certain heads testifying to the transformative power of technology by Georg Grosz (e.g. “Remember Uncle Ernst, The Unhappy Inventor”), Raoul Hausmann, and Max Ernst. The images are complemented by little narratives of the machines taking over the world, the man with no head who wheeled a computer around behind him, and the like.

5. There are a couple of swipes taken at popular culture as represented by the SPXCE girls and robot mall Santa Clauses, in which it is again in question whether these robots are what await us or whether they have already arrived.