Identity and the Web

The WWW provides a new platform for discovery. It can be discovery of ourselves as artists, as citizens, as thinkers, as poets. We can be whatever we want to be. There is tremendous power in this illusion. But is it illusion? As we mirror ourselves in new identities, a transformation enters into the process as we become what we project. We are what we edit. We are what we process.

At first, the principal content defining us on the Internet was text-based, language intent on informing. Blogging moved informing into the realm of identity and discovery, in creating in the constancy of change. Then content added image, then sound, and finally video. Each of these content areas became an arena for self discovery. This extension of media invited new ways of defining self. Look at this video in which the creator is not a drummer nor a pianist:

The fantasy world created through sound and image exists only as a moment of self expression and inquiry, a discovery that takes the creator to a new place through the process of creation and through the Internet witnesses that somehow stumble upon this vivid imagination. It is not an intellectual act, but rather a visceral, intuitive exploration filled with humor, self-awareness, and a sense of spontaneity. None of this happens in real time, but is achieved through assembling stop action photography with precise timing geared to the music track.

Another sound and image inquiry through the Internet takes on the quality of a musical journal. James Blunt creates a fantasy of himself. It’s appearance on YouTube seems like a confessional and a revelation. The simple unpretentious quality of his singing, his turning around, walking toward toward the viewer (it could be me or you), and removing the hood so he can share this intimacy is a confessional to himself and anyone else who might be passing by. The metaphor is extended through his stripping down, baring himself to the world as he shares his fantasy. He faces the realization of his disappointment that he will never be with someone so beautiful.

It is a brief, poignant moment that takes on the air of sincerity. He reveals his excitement when he switches from an almost impersonal narrative and exclaims directly to his fantasy “You’re beautiful! You’re beautiful! You’re beautiful, it’s true!” We are touched by his wish to share such an intimate moment (which is of course, extremely public). The public nature of this intimacy leads to Kevin Sage’s parody below.

Sage’s parody attempts to fool us by seeming so strikingly like the original, but drawing upon cliches and gay phobia to distort the sincerity and shared intimacy of the original. We know it’s an act, even when imitating the naturalness of Blunt, and this ironic realization is reinforced by his apparent leap off of a building into the bowels of the metropolis instead of the deep blue sea of the original.

Yet another parody emerges: “Bloody Cold” from piderman. Parody is a powerful way of establishing and diverting identity. Now the character is no longer a romantic, unpretentious distant lover. Instead he is everyman, out of character and out of place, trapped in someone else’s fantasy.

Parody becomes a form of public inquiry. This becomes social inquiry and reveals the stereotypes that often populate the narratives of our fantasies. The use of all media to conduct this inquiry now insures and wider dialogue and a richer process.

One cannot leave this sequence of responses without looking at the images created to be just the fantasy without the fantisizer, the famous Angelina Jolie — You’re Beautiful.

Here the narrator is only present as a disembodied figure reflecting on a fantasy, celebrating the stereotype of the American Beauty. The repeated iterations of the song in changing contexts makes the song become a parody of itself. Even though it is the same song, the repetitions with changing context remove the innocence of the earlier “reality.” Illusion dissolves into disillusionment and parody becomes caricature. This does not lessen its importance nor its impact but illustrates how distortion adds to and changes meaning.

Such imitative work and parody requires a deep assimilation of the original far beyond the textual meaning. Gestures, expressions, and props must be assimilated and synthesized at a profound level. In the 16th Century, the “Parody Mass” generated new musical expression by borrowing materials from an earlier work. It has been noted that this term might be better translated as “imitation mass”—but even that term fails to acknowledge that a new work emerges from the ashes of the old.

In these works, artists collaborate with the Internet. The Internet becomes a mirror for reflection and discovery. As the works are published, works generate responses, an emerging collaborative process that accelerates as artists transform old materials into new manifestations. Collaboration invites works to become more public, encouraging extension of ideas and materials. Identity, once a private persona presented to the world, is now an ever-changing public presence.