Sylvie Parent: You are known for your videos as well as for your Web works.
What attracted you to the Web and do you see any continuity between both
media?
Sheila Urbanoski: I absolutely think that there is a natural affinity
between the Web and
video (though it is kind of odd to speak of natural anything when talking
about these levels of technological explorations). Some of the affinity is
obvious - reliance on the interface object to convey an artist's work;
digital media; it's "homemade" aspects and so on.
On a practical level, it's probably easier for media artists to make the
synaptic leap to Web-based media because, well, hell, we already use
machines, computers, technology galore in our work. We are used to the
glass screen flattening our vision and the presentation of narrative after
a long and labourious technical process. Is there really that much
difference between a storyboard and a sitemap?
This could be a downside though - the ease of movement between Web/video: I
am often embroiled in discussions about "Web video", and so forth,
precisely because of my background in both. I am a real hard ass about how
the only video that should be on the Web is video that is *made*
specifically for the Web. Vuc Cosik, one of my husbands, makes ASCII videos
- using his medium of Webart and code to make video - in direct response to
the annoying tendency of (video) artists to make a Website, with no
technical, theoretical or aesthetic background (or even interest) in the
Web medium whatsoever...they simply digitize their existing video and
inflict us with massive download times!
So although I think there is very much a practical, technology-based
relationship between the two media, that does not lend itself
automatically to an asethetic or critical movement between video and the Web.
After all the technology may be cutting edge but the content is still
primary, the words still what matters the most...I would argue that the Web
is most perfectly suited to writers - it is a language-based, textual
medium, after all...
S.P.: What attracted you to the Web?
S.U.: Extensible. Distributable. Accessible. Terra Incognita...
The extensibility of this medium; that you can add and subtract and edit
and add and it will never be finished is what is fascinating and maddening.
There is no *original*, no tangible (wall-based) object at all, a truly
magical, illusory, never-ending, ever-changing media. If you choose it to
be. By the way the only Website I have ever considered "finished" is
POSITIVE and that only
because my collaborator Ian Stephens died.
Distributable. Here is an artwork that can be seen just as quickly and
easily in
Hoboken as in Helsinki or Hanoi.
Accessible - and this only increases hourly. Imagine having the results of
your art
practise be available at any time to anyone with access to chipsets...
Terra Incognita, in that there are (were?) no parameters, no history, no
rules...I often work outside of the Art milieu
and I liked the completely unmarked critical territory of this medium
(though that is rapidly changing, naturally. Yet the internet provides the
venue where any theory/criticism about it may be rapidly challenged!). So
although there are attempts now to define/critique the myriad aspects of
the internet, I always feel like the genie is already out of the
bottle...It is running along nicely, sometimes running amok, but there is
still a lot of unstaked territory out there. It is so hip in the digirati
circles I am in to be really down on the Net, it's slow, it's crap, it's
boring. Yup, yup and yup but it is still radical and it still hasn't been
fully tapped...
Oh. And it's cool.
S.P.: You have been working on Internet based projects as early as 1991.
What were your first projects?
S.U.: In the late 80s - early 90s with my trusty Amiga 500 and super speedy
1200baud modem, the technological possibilities were, goddess knows,
limited compared to today. At the time...wow. It was just wild -
this new method of communicating and of interacting (and you know, all
jaded seen-it-all-before blase attitude aside, it still is pretty wild,
pretty wow,
this internet thing).
What I remember the most though was that there were literally *less people
involved*. This was at a time when the
people online in your region were maybe, what, in the dozens, whereas now
we are
talking about the potential participation of the tens of millions...again
just being online at all marked you in a particular, somewhat radical, way.
Various online "interventions" on my part way back when involved joining
chats and taking on the persona of an obnoxious woman challenging the
usually asinine, usually seedy chat (ooo, big stretch, that); baiting
bigots; bogus rumours and flame wars; having group jam sessions and
generally exploring what it was
like portraying whomever or whatever I chose to present myself (or my
selves) as.
To be honest, did I ever consider any of these "art" projects particularly,
as it was the online status quo, you know what I mean?? 'Brat' projects,
definitely. Perhaps newsgroup/bbs/chats could be described as performance
pieces...role playing, gender fucking, assuming persona and other acts of
digital dressing up was pretty prevalent then - and continues to be. There
were the odd times when I would get into performative chats or sort of slam
digital poetry rant sessions that were very chaotic + unstructured = great.
But as far as I could
tell this all rarely involved other confessed artists. But, hey, who knew ??
I was definitely attracted to the digital dressing up aspect and also the
adoption and discarding of virtual persona - as these are
interests that run throughout all of my art practise...But I would say that
being online in the late 80s was most important to me in that I got
connected, literally and figuratively, and got the digital juices flowing.
The creation of important or earth shattering art works was not relevant or
even the point for me.
I also really liked the inclusive nature of the internet community.
And yes I do say INclusive. I have heard countless arguments about how the
net is an exclusive place; it is white, male, educated, american, etc. -
you need the technology and the access and the experience to get up online.
Pfft, say I. If we say this often enough, everyone will come to believe it.
Unlegislated communication is inclusive. Unlimited access to unlimited
information is inclusive. Cybercafes, libraries, schools, everywhere are
demos, kiosks, computers computers computers. So the access to hardware is
there, honest, it is the wetware that is the barrier.
This leads into how I got involved in this stuff in the first place. As
with everything great in my life, a good friend showed me the way and I was
immediately off and running. And this has much to do with why I am
committed to showing others how to do that thing I do - I want to set as
many others, especially artists, off and running as possible!!
For the record, the first 'real' strictly Web-based project I did was in
winter 1992, which was
for the Mendel Art Gallery in good ole Saskatoon Saskatchewan. Bruce
Grenville was the curator then and hired me to creating a prototype Website
for them (to be viewed on Mosaic!).
It was great! Having the time to just sit down and learn all about HTML was
just what I needed. Very Renaissance - like having a patron!
S.P.: A few of your projects deal with pornography on the Web. Most women
are uncomfortable with pornography. It is the realm of men, and
in their hands too. But you got interested in the subject, and got
involved in your way. On your Website shera.org, you give
"recipes" to create your own Porn Website and suggest "ideas" about
what you can do with it. Do you want to tell your stories as a
pornographer?
S.U.: I am a self-described pornographer, yes. I surf porn a lot but after
all, in point of fact, I find Playboy less offensive than Cosmopolitan. I
am a major fan of the Internet porn industry. They are the real force
behind the expansion of the home market for internet use (just like home
VCRs - of course you all know that the only reason you have VHS as opposed
to Beta is because the porn industry backed the one and not the other: same
again with DVD). The porn industry is the only one making any real money,
and lots and lots of it, on the net. Hand over fist (or hand over something
ha ha
ha). And because they have the most money to make they can also employ the
best people.
When I do workshops I constantly suggest people study the source code of
porn sites (and I do try to remember to show them how to surf with the
images turned off). If any site out there is using the best and the latest
and the neatest new hacks (especially around search engine placement) it
will be porn sites.
For example, I spend quite alot of time experimenting with Search Engine
placement, using meta
tags, alts and other code tricks to usurp the position of certain companies or
individuals - in other words to redirect people to my site instead of the
'real' Website they were looking for.
In 1997, I was very pleased to have my url place in the top seven to ten
positions with four major search engines upon a search for a prominent
Canadian anti-choice organization. In this way I was successful in having
people interested in the Right to Life be introduced to the Right Life. In
another version, I coded up my Website work so that it would be hidden from
search engines: an interesting if academic exercise - how does a Webartist
hide on the Web?
Manipulating the search engines was very successful, and seriously, every
thing I learned I learned from surfing porn.
I have had a number of projects around porn, some on my own, others
involving the participation of other like minded programmers, brats and
artists. Some are lost in the drifts of data floating around in cyberspace...
One of many favourites was when we set up a dummy porn site that had a very
standard preview section, and then a request for credit card information in
order to become a member. We then sent on a pswd which let the user into
the "real" Website, which was my version of what a good porn site would be.
How to give your partner an erotic massage, Anais Nin writings, essay by
Greer, sexy archealogical imagery (that famous Sheela-na-gig!) and
so on...Maybe it sounds tame, but it was actually pretty cute and sexy...
Sexy was the aesthetic intent of this project - there was a positive
dearth of sweet sex sites, though this is much better nowadays...
But the concept of messing around with expectations of porn Websites
continued to interest me - and that developed into increasing
experiments in data-mining along with the creation and distribution of digital
personas.
The Website described above was just one of the so-called "interventions"
with porn that I worked on. There were a number of variations on the theme
(remember this was happening, quietly, over a period of three to four
years) - this gave me lots of time to experiment and collaborate and dream
up new tactics and schemes, strategies and yes, art projects...
For example, after getting some particularly cranky emails from
dissatisfied customers (I mean, really!) - and btw no credit cards were
actually debited for the
pswd/membership (neatly sidestepping any court action, there's a tip for ya
for free!) - we spammed all the
gathered credit card info to all of the entire membership. A way of
illustrating the misplaced trust we continue to place in such a
distributable, unlegislated (particularly at that time, in 1996) medium.
S.P.: What were the reactions to these actions?
S.U.: Well, the good thing about having a sympathetic server is that you
can shut down mailbox accounts quickly!! Jeez, people get so touchy when
you spam out what they naively believe is their private information.
The most virulent reaction was from people being confronted not by
their credit card information but their digital persona. This was when we
used another twist of the same strategy described above but utilized the
data gathered a little differently. As each member was
asked to fill a standard form about likes and dislikes, sexual
predilections and so forth we thought it would be nice service to introduce
likeminded creatures. It was a very simple database script but it really
freaked some people out to "meet" others who had their same interests...
Because remember, that the anonymity of it all, the lack of exposure is
what attracts so many users to online porn and fetish in the first place!
taking away that veneer of assumed privacy (because - surprise - nothing is
ever really
private, esp on the WWW), drawing back that curtain really really disturbed
the poor men
unlucky enough to have surfed my site.
And so it went...until it got a bit too hot and so i prompty sold the last
of the domains I had bought
and got the fuck out.
As for reaction not being positive, well, that is putting it mildly. This
is when having a virtual persona of your own comes in really handy. The
name and person I chose to manifest as The Pornographer doesn't exist,
therefore the abuse (and threats of lawsuits) directed at him/her were a
little easier to shake
off.
And the response was often very positive! Even a lot of the
guys whose credit card information I spammed out just laughed about
it and accepted it as a light-hearted poke at them (which of course, it was).
I was especailly charmed by people who appreciated the
erotic aspects of the "fake" porn site, and thought it was nice. And I was
sent anecdotes like how
the url was being traded around as "jokes" on co-workers; isn't that sweet??
What is most interesting right now is the reactions I am get from people
when I only discuss this work, within the arts community. (point of fact it
took me quite a while to "out" these projects as artworks). The discourse
around pornography was been done to death, hasn't it? and then it was -
well - so long ago, really.
Remember that I am talking abouactions/projects that NO LONGER EXIST, are
in archive form, were really small potatoes or were just one-offs. Wicked
Mystress was sold, what, like 4 years ago now (!) So lately I have been
interested in the reactions I get from people who
haven't seen the work at all, just heard about it or attended one of my
talks. I find their own imaginations embellish my literally non existent
work to points where they never actually went! I have been accused a number
of times of being exploitative of
women's bodies, when the only sexual imagery was a millenia-old
Sheela-na-gig sculpture. Or of abandoning feminism by branding my politics
with an anti-sexuality taint - when it was all about sexuality, just not
about smut. Or being anti-men because I am critical of a "healthy" outlet for
sexual frustration. Or being a crap programmer because the pages look
shitty (well, five years ago they didn't nyah nyah nyah).
S.P.: During your talk at the ISEA colloquium Cartographies held in
Montréal last October, you also
mentioned other earlier projects.
S.U.: This is Your Sister. Version 1.0 Fall 1994
On a domain buying spree, bought up several potentially interesting names,
and starting mucking around with the idea of how to make money off porn,
hee hee hee. Though I really wish I
had bought, like, cocacola.com or something, shit.
Version 1.1 Spring 1995
So when I said that I never used pictures of Naked Ladies in my Websites I
lied, a bit. In one version of my first porn site - this being the version
when
people (men) paid for a pswd to a porn site - they were presented
with very straight ahead "beaver shots" of women with THIS IS YOUR SISTER
stamped in a "censored" look across their bodies. I had twelve different
pages with twelve different versions of the same text on different women.
Version 2.4 Fall 1995
In typical Web fashion, the project morphs on - i started adding other text
messages, i remember using the Playboy centrefold "information box" as a
guide:
"Hi, My name is Sindy, and I love snowboarding and sunset walks on the
beach. I am a Leo and a 32 year old single mother desperately trying to
keep my child out of social services by masquerading as a 22 year old single
nymphomaniac with whopping 42DD plastic breasts that are killing me slowly
but I want it bad oh baby baby".
The images of the naked women were all taken off assorted commercial porn
sites, I particularly enjoyed finding ones that were watermarked - to
supposedly protect their copyright...you understand that the naked women
did not
own the copyright, the Website authors did.
Version 3.5 late fall 1995, into early 1996
With an engineer or programmer or several dozen artist/activists we may or
may not have managed to access the images directory of the FTP server of a
prominent porn distributor. In the brief moment of time between entering
their databank and the discovery by their security we may or may not have
uploaded dozens of versions of This Is Your Sister images. Having used
their naming syntax these images may or may not still be randomly cropping
up on the byways of the aforesaid fictional, or not, porn site.
Version 4.2 throughout 1996
It was at this time that I became really rabid about the ins and outs of
the code. Keeping a toe in with continued permutations of porn sites,
implementing suggestions from cyberfemme and getting legal advice!
Version Fin early 1997
Sold the last of the naughty domain names, even wicked mystress, which is
now a "normal" porn site. Though I often wonder if certain users ever
hesitate when they see that url...hee hee hee
S.P.: How about Cyberfemme?
S.U.: i forgot about Cyberfemme! it was the result of an argument over the
film Bladerunner. Darryl
Hannah's character was referred to as an early Cyberbabe and i got my nose
out of joint - a. because she was not cyber, she was android and b. she was
a sex toy - and what we need now are CyberGoddesses, cyberfeminists,
cybersisters...a "woman" also online at the time poked fun at my rant and
said what we really needed were cyberfemme as there were already enough
cyber butch. ROTFL!!
so we started another newsgroup very spontaneously called cyberfemme where
we pitched ideas or concepts (esp. interesting for a little artist like me,
right?). Who knows if any of the ideas came to pass? it was just fun to jam
on them.
It was through cyberfemme that i pitched some of the early ideas i came up
with and through that group that i got some great ideas back at me...
This was pre-www, very late 1990 so the
discussion and ideas centered around pre-Web actions or physical
manifestations (let's all apply for visa cards with the exact same data!
let's all mail tampax used tampons and ask for a refund! group written
letters to Dear Playboy and Esquire, and other cheeky stupidity). It
eventually fizzled out, at least I think so! but i kept in touch with nine
of the most interesting and we still bounce off each other now and again...
We had a brief flare of activity in 1995 - 1996 when Cyberfemme was a
fantastic resource for me as a sounding board and sort of vetting system
for some of the ideas I was playing around with, but the people then
(though all were women, who really knows if they were) had a hard core
technical bent, very much
into the cyber as opposed to the femme, very interesting...
I could safely say that it through this group that I developed a real
appreciation of the actual building blocks of the Web, in other words the
code itself. There is an elegance and beauty to writing code, and thereby
controlling the medium, that is of a asthetic interest all of its own. And
again, it is not everyone who gets it...but everyone at least can see the
tangible result.
I have always said that as I don't use my vagina to work my mouse, and the
computer doesn't care if I am boy/girl/both or vegetable matter.
Gendering technology is the vested interest of the status quo - the boys
just don't wanna lose their jobs or give up any of their marked territory,
hee hee hee. Too late!! they should have stopped us earlier by not creating
SGML or HTML or other English based user friendly client side programming
languages, that made the transition from user to backend so much easier. Oh
what a torrent they have unleashed...
That was a total cyberfemme moment, enjoy.
S.P.: Another important aspects of your work is collaboration. You have
been involved in many art centers in Canada, training other
artists, helping projects to become real. And a lot of your Web
projects are actually conceived with others.
S.U.: Any Web artist who says they work alone is lying!! I do all of my own
code and graphics and so on - however it is the constant back and forth and
dialogue within the net community that fuels my work. It is not humanly
possible for a human to keep up with the infinite changes and developments
in Web-based media and possiblities...and if you don't know the
possiblities how can you push them? So I rely on the human network within
the digital network to keep me informed. This is pure data, the pure tech
collaboration, around sharing ideas and concepts as well as techniques and
processes ; the, well, meta-collaboration aspect of working on the Web.
The Web is by it's very nature collaborative - the work doesn't even exist
without the client/server relationship - the hardware works together with
the network and so on and so on.
Artists collaborating could be a potentially difficult situation,
particularly when using a technology based medium where only one of the
team is technically savvy. There is a tremendous amount of trust involved,
especially so when you are taking another artist's work and interpreting it
to the Web medium. I have often described myself as
a wetware tool "channeling" the Web vision of other artists...
To work with someone who has a similar sensibility or approach while you
each contribute differing skill sets to the project, that is when it is
really cool. With my role as Web guru it is can be tricky - you know, you
don't just want to be someone's technician, or percieved as such, but I
have been lucky i guess and have had the best people to work with.
Collaborating using the Web is ideal in so many ways. For example, I worked
on a site with Chris Robbins (still in progress, typically!), a media
artist based in San Francisco while I was as far as away as you can
imagine, in New Brunswick. And it didn't matter a bit - she could have been
next door. Distances collapse, it is gorgeous.
I really enjoy collaborating, particularly with writers. As I have said
elsewhere I think the text-based Web is so perfect for writers...and the
medium is
just perfect for them!
Some of the writing projects I have done include Speaking the Language of Spiders. This site incorporated the text and graphics of aboriginal artists
into a framework of the Saulteaux cosmology of time. It was also the first
time that I directly collaborated - with Ahasiw Maskegon-Iskwew - on the
actual writing of the code.
Bill Burns (photographer, writer, conceptual artist) whose work I have
always loved - and who is another member of the Saskaspora (the
Saskatchewan artist diaspora) and I have been working on bringing his
bookwork How To Help Animals Escape From Endangered Habitats online.
Ian Stephens died in Spring 1996 and I didn't finish the site based on his
poetry and stories until 1997 (I needed some time off) so it was a
personally difficult project for me. However the opportunity to work
with such a strong body of work and to be given the trust of someone to
take their life's work, interpret it (through graphics and code) and
then to present it was a tremendous gift. I still think this site,
POSITIVE, is my strongest work in that it had everything I strive for in
my Web practise. Strong, challenging, engaging content within a complex
code structure (deceptively so in this case) with fluid cross
browser/platform useability: a site that is viewable on just about any
clunker that was visually engaging as well as emotionally, textually and
cerebrally.
It was also an interesting project for me because I decided to not update
that site or the code used within it. Which is often remarked upon or
criticized. Because it is an older site it is much less sophisticated
technically than the viewer might be used to...when I started it, framesets
where just being used!
As there is a tremendous amount of debate around archiving Websites, this
site is a bit of a time capsule. When authoring Websites we tend to
constantly update them, overwriting original versions into
non-existence...so I decided to keep POSITIVE in its original code structure.
In the projects already described, I was involved very much as a
collaborator/partner. But I am not adverse to being someone's code monkey.
I have been known to slave for a good cause, like Anna Malkin's Amazing Amazons Website done for cookies and love just because i want to see her
make her film. This is just one example of my direct and tangible way of
helping artists, just getting their site done!
Probably the most ambitious collaborative project is Vingtieme
Siecle/My Twentieth Century which is comprised of 100 stories contributed by 100
people from all over the world, it is not nearly complete but it is
interesting again in that the people trusted me with a story, and I am
working to present the framework for them. I like the challenge and also
the connotation...though I would call these compilation works as opposed to
Collaboration.
Me Myself I, where the Website was an integral part of a video installation
only existed due to the input of the people within the gallery space, as
well as off site. But I can say this of any site actually: we need the
user! that is the real collaboration. The act of viewing Websites is
usually of a very intimate nature...the artist/audience dynamic is very
unique in this way. It's just me and you...
It is another level of challenge to me as a creator to work as a teacher,
and to pass on my enthusiasm and experience. I have always relied on the
kindness of strangers and in the Web, we all do. Passing on information is
what this is all about and as I said it is vitally important to me to
spread the word (or would that be code ??).
I have done workshops from New Brunswick to British Columbia in groups of
one to three hundred and love it - and if one great Website is made by just
one of
the many participants that is just the best feeling...
Yes I have been involved in regional and national artist run centre
community, for like, ever. It is such a great system and I try to be as
supportive of the grassroots artist-run community as possible because
without them we are nothing! I was on boards and I was staff and I
volunteered and workshopped and campaigned and travelled and spoke and
blathered and swore and generally carried on and now I see video taken
seriously, new media being written about, audio innovation continuing,
experimental film being screened and a strong media art community where
artists can just stroll into a centre and
have access to amazing equipment that i would have killed for ten years ago
- and you know it warms the cockles of this bi-platform, cross-browsing
media artist, it really does...
Soyez beau!
