Hyperrhiz 27

The Garden of Network Delights

David Han
York University, Toronto, Canada

Citation: Han, David. “The Garden of Network Delights.” Hyperrhiz: New Media Cultures, no. 27, 2024. doi:10.20415/hyp/027.a06

Abstract: The Garden of Network Delights is a WebGL virtual environment entirely composed of media assets freely obtained from online sources and inspired by the found footage and collage practices of earlier film and video artists. Drawing on the work of Joseph Cornell, Chick Strand, Dara Birnbaum, Emergency Broadcast Network, Arthur Lipsett, Abigail Child, and Bruce Conner, this project celebrates and re-applies the methods of earlier artists who found, borrowed, stole, appropriated, repurposed, recycled, and reused the cultural material available to them. This work is a garden, a junkyard, a garage sale, a thrift store, and an archive all at once. Since every aspect of the work is obtained from a freely available Internet source, it is an environment that borrows from those that borrow, a copy of a copy of a copy. A representation of a mass produced object, which itself represents something beyond itself. Through the proliferation of these media artifacts - 3D models, images, videos, sounds - the meaning is both somehow ever present, residing on the surface, and always one more step away, on a deeper level. Or perhaps it has calcified within the server rooms of some anonymous data center.

Keywords: virtual environment, webgl, found footage, collage film, assemblage art, media art.

View Project: The Garden of Network Delights

Instructions for navigation: best viewed on desktop, using Chrome browser. Make sure the sound is on. Use the mouse to look around and WASD or arrow keys to navigate. There is a portal to the server room located above the main path that can be entered by navigating through it.

Artist Statement

This story is one that is being retold, with small variation, using the same sentence to make a different point.

The more and the less always lead to a further point.

It is a matter of different and divergent narratives, as though to each point of view there corresponds an absolutely distinct landscape.

Repetition and variation.

The tide comes in. The tide goes out.

Same coast, different water.

These are the rhythms of life.

—

The Garden of Network Delights is a landscape sculpted from the echoes and fragments of the web. This WebGL virtual environment is inspired by the found footage techniques employed by experimental film and video makers such as Bruce Conner, Joseph Cornell, Dara Birnbaum, Chick Strand, Abigail Child, Emergency Broadcast Network (EBN), and Arthur Lipsett. These artists are known for their use of the excesses of media culture to create new work that explores the reappropriation of the found object.

In constructing this digital garden, this work has borrowed the methods of these groundbreaking artists, sifting through the digital detritus of the internet to assemble a virtual space teeming with the curatorial energy and instincts these earlier artists brought to their work. This project is a celebration of the digital age's potential for remixing, reimagining, and recontextualizing the vast array of media artifacts freely available online. Images, sounds, videos, and 3D models come together in this space, each element a whisper of another story, a shadow of a memory repurposed and transformed.

Bruce Conner's seminal 1958 found footage film A Movie and Arthur Lipsett’s collage of sound and image in his 1961 short film Very Nice Very Nice serve as a foundational influence for this project. Both Conner and Lipsett’s use of found sounds and images to create a surreal, disjointed narrative is mirrored in the chaotic yet harmonious environment of The Garden of Network Delights. Similarly, like these artists, this work has assembled a collection of disparate elements, each one extracted from the digital ether and woven into a tapestry that transcends its individual components. This garden is a symphony of visual and auditory stimuli, a cacophony of references that coalesce into a coherent whole.

Navigating the garden allows participants to create their own soundtrack and encounter visual, auditory, and spatial juxtapositions. The creative potential inherent in the collision of the aural and the visual is a reference to the work of Abigail Child in her 1983 film Mutiny, in which a sonic landscape conspires with and against a rapid stream of images to create a poem in which a cyclic movement and repetition reveal new meanings that subvert dominant cinematic processes.

Two other works that are found in the garden and aim to subvert are Dara Birnbaum's 1968-69 video art piece Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman and EBN’s 1992 underground music video, We Will Rock You (Behavior Modification). The way both works deconstruct and reassemble popular media to critically engage their source material has served as a direct influence on The Garden of Network Delights. This project is a commentary on the proliferation of media in the digital age, a reflection on how meaning is constructed and deconstructed through the endless cycle of appropriation and reinterpretation.

Lastly, the meta-analysis/obsession that runs through both Joseph Cornell’s 1936 collage film Rose Hobart and Chick Strand’s 1979 film Loose Ends has inspired the garden’s surreal quality. Scale and material have been manipulated to create an environment where ordinary thrift store items have been elevated to the extraordinary, and where each of these disparate elements are intended to create a cohesive whole.

The Garden of Network Delights is a celebration of the discarded, the overlooked, and the forgotten. In this digital age, where the boundaries between the original and the copy are increasingly blurred, this project serves as a reminder that even the most mundane and seemingly insignificant objects hold the potential for transformation. By borrowing from those who borrow, the space is intended to be both a reflection of and a commentary on our networked world.

This garden is not a place of tranquility and order, but a chaotic, ever-shifting landscape where meaning is both omnipresent and elusive. The proliferation of media artifacts within this space creates an assemblage of references and associations, each layer adding depth to the narrative. On the surface, the garden is a cacophony of visual and auditory stimuli, but beneath lies a labyrinth of connections waiting to be discovered. Exploration of the garden is an invitation to delve deeper, to uncover the hidden threads that bind this virtual world together.

In this ever-shifting environment, meaning is both fluid and fixed, ever-present and elusive. The internet is a vast, interconnected web of information, a place where ideas and images are constantly being shared, remixed, and repurposed. In this context, The Garden of Network Delights captures the paradox of the digital age, creating a space where meaning is both on the surface and always one step away, residing within the depths of the server rooms of some anonymous data center.

Ultimately, The Garden of Network Delights is a celebration of the endless possibilities that arise when we both embrace the methods of those who came before us and forge new paths in the ever-evolving landscape of the digital age. This project is a reminder that even the most mundane and seemingly insignificant objects can be transformed into something new and meaningful. It invites the viewer to wander, to lose themselves on its paths, and to find meaning in the ephemeral echoes of the digital age.

Author‘s original project link: https://friendgener8or.itch.io/the-garden-of-network-delights

Screenshots