By Hanna Stokes, Junior Researcher
#include <stdio.h>
int main() {
printf("Hello, World!");
return 0;
}
The result of running the program above displays the title of this section. Writing this simple program is the traditional way to begin learning a new programming language. It is a way of saying to yourself, “one day I’ll be able to write code that addresses the world.” As a software development student, I have made such programs many times. This time is different, however, since today is the day, I finally address a world: yours!
Finding the Web Revival with Cursor
For the release of Cursor’s 4th magazine called “Off the Grid”, Claudia Montaner presented her contribution. It was an essay, and a 4×4 cm lotus fold made of receipts she had collected within the span of a year.
https://player.vimeo.com/video/870108765?h=c1383001fe
As it was passed around, she spoke about her experience collecting physical receipts and about how they differ from digital ones. Including how digital receipts are “largely invisible” except for the hypervisible ones used to “flex’ the fruits of our hustle, and collage patterns of consumption into aesthetics and personality types”. And at the end of the essay she writes,
“While I have no control over the invisible grid of data that trails us all, with this [lotus fold] I could build my own grid, tell my own story using my own data.”[i]
This event and Claudia’s artistic research project spurred me into motion. I searched for a way to explore being off Big Tech grids. It was challenging, but mimicking Claudia’s patience and curiosity kept me going. A year into the process was when I decided to create my own website. Before I had even secured a domain name, I revisited a website by the Cursor discord member, Kristoffer Tjalve. It has a poetic motion graphic that makes the website look flooded by water. As I tried to understand how it was made, I realized there was a button in the bottom-right corner. A button so small, that I hadn’t thought of it as more than an emoji the first time I had seen it. Clicking on the button led me to an incredibly retro looking website.
“Join the Leaky Homepage Ring!”, it says at the top in large letters. The content on the website bobs up and down. Listed are the websites in the homepage ring along with a measure of how flooded by water they are. I continued reading and read about how to make my own website “leaky”. This wacky website was inviting me to join a group of websites that all had motion graphics that I liked! I checked out the websites listed and found out that they were also connected to other rings of websites. This led me to countless new websites. Old sites that looked new and new sites that looked old and everything in between! And all of them were beautiful. Some, in the way only children’s drawings are, and others, in the way a piece of art crafted over many years might appear. Others were ruins or museums that served as windows to a forgotten past. And many websites were kind enough to provide methods to learn their craft! My website began to form, and I became a part of something called “The Web Revival”. After such a long time, I was by shore, surfing the web and making ripples. And I was swept away by sheer joy.
Tangent #3
The name “Web Revival” is inspired by the American Folk Revival. The American Folk Revival started in the 1940’s and peaked in the mid 1960’s.[ii] The music of the American Folk Revival express disapproval of all forms of dehumanization. Some songs even became anthems for the civil-rights and for the anti-war movement. Additionally, it was a movement that “played an influential role in environmental political efforts”.[iii]The Web Revival is repeating history by again celebrating humanity. This time as a response to the continuing dehumanization in times of rapid digitalisation[iv] and in the failure to respond to climate urgency.
The main distinctions between the two movements are their artistic medium, the technology used for distribution, and public access and engagement. The American Folk Revival was a musical arts movement, that was distributed on radio and television networks. People could listen at home, attend a concert and in rare cases they would start their own bands. The Web Revival, on the other hand, is a visual arts movement distributed across the internet. But who is an actor in this movement? The culture on the Web Revival doesn’t have only stars and spectators. It is a collection of amateurs. Here amateur has no negative connotation and just its original French meaning “lover” or “enthusiast”. Together these amateurs foster a space that helps new visitors to also become passionate hobbyists. Since what could possibly be more humanizing than regarding your site’s viewers as curious people to connect with and collaborate with?
The Web Revival is not just a visual arts movement that critiques society. It is a movement that opens new avenues and navigates the space between the material and the possible. Together they are making music, building instruments, doing outreach and running a music school. The wild web, the smol web, the indie web, the retro web, the poetic web and others[v] all work together to create alternative online societies that combat the need and desire to be on Big Tech platforms.
Finding Theory and Methods with ETHOS Lab
As this was my first attempt at STS research, I must admit I had no idea where to start. It was a requirement for the application for this junior researcher position, to include the intended theory and methods. Since art is a sine qua non of the Web Revival, I decided to study the work of Prof. Dr. Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung. The reasoning behind this- besides Ndikung’s global prominence in the contemporary art world- was how his debut exhibition as Director and Chief Curator of the Berlin institution Haus der Kulteren der Welt had made me feel.
The group exhibition was called “O Quilombismo: Of Resisting and Insisting. Of Flight as Fight. Of Other Democratic Egalitarian Political Philosophies”. Quilombismo is an Afro-Brazilian political philosophy inspired by the quilombos of Brazil. Quilombos are settlements founded by maroons (enslaved people who escaped) and were a form of resistance against dehumanization. In an interview conducted just before the exhibition Ndikung states,
“One of the greatest evils that has been inflicted in the context of colonization is the dehumanization of human beings. And we have to do exercises of re-humanization, of re-establishing this humanity that we have destroyed.”[vi]
Therefore, to better understand how I could join the netizens of the Web Revival in doing such exercises, I read Ndikung’s essay “Pidginization as Curatorial Method: Messing with Languages and Praxes of Curating”.
Instead of jumping straight into summarizing what pidginization is, I would like to highlight how it is written. Ndikung introduces himself to the reader. He then tells the story of what led him to the point in his life where he was writing the essay. The reader can imagine Ndikung sitting in front of his desk, maybe sipping on tea and taking time out of his day to share his story. Instead of “seeing everything from nowhere” his writing creates a line of vision from him to the reader.[vii] And by doing so in the introduction, Ndikung is already using pidginization as a method. Pidginization as a method is the assembly and reassembly of language by going on tangents and finding ways to exchange information at the intersections. There is no right or wrong grammar or pronunciation, simply an ability or inability to create understanding. By writing his essay like this, Ndikung gives the reader an opportunity to better understand him, his language, his world. He creates a place between his present and theirs for an exchange of words. And at this crossroad he takes the opportunity to fan out more tangents for the reader to explore and to share with the reader how they can do the same for someone else. The method of pidginization is reminiscent of the other methods that have gained popularity in the last decade, but here I’d like to highlight its similarities to Quilombismo to finish this sketch of pidginization. In Abdias Nascimento’s seminal essay- wherein Quilombismo was first conceptualized- he wrote,
“Quilombismo articulates the diverse levels of collective life whose dialectic interaction proposes complete fulfillment and realization of the creative capacities of the human being.”[viii]
Which brings me back to the Web Revival where artistic and inquisitive capabilities are taught online in a community context. Its methods seem to cause the proliferation of malleable worlds and constellations, but it is not without its own set of issues and challenges. For now, it suffices to say, that the Web Revival is a digital place where we can learn to tell and mess with stories together, using our own wor(l)ds.
Abdias Nascimento, Oxunmaré Ascende (Oshunmare Rising, 1972), painting, acrylic on canvas, 152 × 102 cm. IPEAFRO Black Art Museum Collection, digital reproduction by Miguel Pacheco e Chaves, RCS Arte Digital
See Ya Later, World!
For every issue of Cursor magazine, we throw a release party, and we are also currently planning a coding camp for this summer. It would be fun to see new faces. ETHOS Lab does lots of interesting events as well. If you are too shy for real life encounters, feel free to find me on Cursor’s discord. And if you are too shy for that too, well, then you can visit my website where you’ll find my e-mail. Expect a swift reply.
[i] lotusfold_04 — CURSOR mag. (2024). Cursormag.net. https://cursormag.net/lotusfold_04
[ii] Folk Revival. (n.d.). Smithsonian Music. https://music.si.edu/spotlight/american-folk-music/musicians
[iii] Politics and Protest. (n.d.). Smithsonian Music. https://music.si.edu/spotlight/american-folk-music/politics-and-american-folk-music
[iv] Melonking. (2022, May 21). Intro to the Web Revival #1: What is the Web Revival? Melon’s Thoughts. https://thoughts.melonking.net/guides/introduction-to-the-web-revival-1-what-is-the-web-revival
[v] Ibid.
[vi] Dirke Köpp. (2023, June 2). “You can’t do decolonization without healing.” Dw.com; Deutsche Welle. https://www.dw.com/en/you-cant-do-decolonization-without-healing/a-65790887
[vii] Haraway, D. (1988). Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective. Feminist Studies, 14(3), 575–599.
[viii] Nascimento, A. (1980). Quilombismo: An Afro-Brazilian Political Alternative. Journal of Black Studies, pp. 141-178