The net artworks under discussion here present instances of \u00adtextual adaptation. Given that adaptation is a \u201ctranspositional practice, an act of re-vision in itself\u201d2<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 2 <\/a> - Julie Sanders, Adaptation and Appropriation<\/em> (London & New York: Routledge, 2006), 18.<\/span> we take the opportunity here to examine how two \u00adtraditional narrative forms have been altered by the creative \u00adexploitation of digital technology and specifically the use of interactivity. Media \u00adspecific analysis of these adaptations will bring out not only the specificity of both traditional print and digital media but also the motivations and ideologies instantiated in these particular textual transformations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n As with any adaptation, re-vision implies varying degrees of \u00adideological re-orientation. The very fact that the artworks under \u00adconsideration are made available on and disseminated via the Internet is an indication of an aesthetic that drives much of web art whose \u00adnetworking capabilities hold out the (utopian) promise for the advancement of \u00addemocratic social structures.3<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 3 <\/a> - Steven Wilson points out that \u201cthe Internet represents a new challenge for art. It foregrounds the immaterial and underscores cultural propositions, placing the aesthetic debate at the core of social transformations. Unique to postmodernity, it also offers a practical model of decentralized knowledge and power structures, challenging contemporary paradigms of behavior and discourse.\u201d Information Arts: Intersections of Art, Science and Technology <\/em>(Cambridge: MIT Press, 2002), 563.<\/span> Furthermore, the net gallery Rhizome.org where these works are archived also promotes such a social re-vision. Alluding to Deleuze and Guattari\u2019s notion of rhizome, its structure is that of an anti-hierarchical, decentralized network. Founder Mark Tribe describes it as a social sculpture, an interconnected, collaborative platform run by new media artists, curators, critics and viewers.4<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 4 <\/a> - Green, 57.<\/span> Offering a new model of distribution for artists and a more open and inclusive curatorial process, it provides an alternative to \u201cinstitutional hierarchies and centralized business models.\u201d5<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 5 <\/a> - Nathalie Bookchin, \u201cGrave-digging and Net Art: A Proposal for the Future,\u201d Network Art: Practices and Positions<\/em>, ed. Tom Corby (London & New York: Routledge, 2006), 72.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n The works discussed below share a common ideology to, on the one hand, challenge or disrupt traditional channels of communication and, on the other hand, open up new ones. Nathalie Bookchin\u2019s The Intruder<\/em> and Zoe Kavanagh\u2019s dms26713<\/em> are stand-alone pieces, which is to say that other than on the web, they can exist on DVD or CD-ROM. In both works, we witness the transformation of text traditionally presented in fixed, linear and printed form into a multi-layered, multi-modal object. Furthermore, interactivity and materiality are salient features that contribute to the transformation of conventional paths of textual communication. Our objective is to examine how transposing texts to the electronic medium affords artists definite opportunities for intervention and as one might expect subversion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Intruder<\/em>, created in 1999 by Natalie Bookchin, an artist and \u00adeducator at the California Institute of the Arts, is an adaptation of Jorge Luis Borges\u2019 short story of the same name, \u201cLa intrusa,\u201d first printed in the third edition of El Aleph<\/em> (1966). The story was written late in Borges\u2019 career, when he was sixty-six. It is uncharacteristic of the Argentinean author\u2019s legendary intellectual and abstract constructions and has been read by several critics as a biographical reflection of the author\u2019s \u00adproblematic relationship with women and perhaps indicative of repressed homosexual desires.7<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 7 <\/a> - See for example Martin Stabb, Borges Revisited<\/em> (Boston: Twayne, 1991) and Robert Lima, \u201cCoitus Interruptus: Sexual Transubstantiation in the Works of Jorge Luis Borges,\u201d Modern Fiction Studies <\/em>19 (1973): 407-17.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cLa intrusa\u201d is about two brothers who fall in love with the same woman. One day, Cristi\u00e1n Nilsen brings home a woman named Juliana Burgos to live with him and his brother, Eduardo. With Cristi\u00e1n\u2019s consent, Eduardo is allowed to share her sexual favours. Eventually however, the brothers become jealous of one another and, in order to alleviate tensions, decide to sell her to a brothel. Still, each \u00adcontinues to see her in secret and finally, the brothers decide to buy Juliana back. As the jealousy between the two brothers worsens, Cristi\u00e1n, fearing the breakdown of their fraternal bond, murders her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He informs Eduardo that he killed her so she could no longer separate them. In an ultimate act of reconciliation the two brothers bury her together. The last line of the tale, \u201cOne more link bound them now\u2014the woman that they cruelly sacrificed and their common need to forget her,\u201d indicates that the shared woman continues to act as a conduit for their love for one another. Her death becomes a \u201csacrifice\u201d that allows them to preserve and even reinforce their relationship.8<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 8 <\/a> - As Herbert J. Brant writes: \u201cthe erotic desire of the two men is plainly not directed towards a female, but rather towards each other, with the female as the intermediary focal point at\/in which the two men may coincide. This type of sexual activity has the dual objective of fulfilling the societal mandate of \u2018compulsory heterosexuality\u2019 when the males use the requisite female body for sexual purposes, while at the same time circumventing the proscription of male homosexual contact. In other words, Borges has substituted an intervening female body between the men as a way to permit the men to connect physically without transgressing heteropatriarchal prohibitions.\u201d \u201cThe Queer Use of Communal Women in Borges\u2019 \u2018El muerto\u2019 and \u2018La intrusa\u2019,\u201d Latin American Studies Association: LASA95 Papers Pilot Project, 1995, http:\/\/lanic.utexas.edu\/project\/lasa95\/brant.html, consulted Feb. 21, 2008.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n Bookchin\u2019s adaptation of this novella addresses the problematic nature of a relationship built on a foundation of violence and misogyny. The story is narrated by a female voice-over and advances through a series of seminal electronic games, from Pong to war simulations. The story\u2019s progress is conditional upon a player\u2019s actions\u2014such as shooting, \u00adfighting or catching characters and thus, instead of winning points, a player is rewarded with a piece of narrative. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The Intruder<\/em>\u2019s participatory dimension highlights a specific feature that so often characterizes Internet art. As Rachel Green points out, \u201cGame environments crystallize some of Internet art\u2019s most distinctive \u00adcharacteristics, chief among them interactivity: a game literally depends on a player.\u201d9<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 9 <\/a> - Green, 145.<\/span> Indeed, The Intruder<\/em>\u2019s unfolding requires a player\u2019s actual physical participation. S\/he must contribute to and join in symbolically aggressive behaviours: for example a shootout between two cowboys or a Pong game (\u201cHit Girl\u201d) in which the traditional ball has been replaced by a female stick figure. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Later on, at a point in the story where the brothers decide to sell Juliana to a brothel, the script requires the player to catch the woman\u2019s belongings and fragments of printed narrative in a pail, as they are expulsed through her vagina. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In these two games, unconventional graphics highlight an \u00adexplicitly critical stance with regards to the treatment of women. The game \u00adscenarios illustrate in a very direct manner the woman\u2019s status as a traded commodity and reflect the augmenting threat of violence directed at the female protagonist as the brothers\u2019 jealousy and lust rise to its climatic and violent end.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Intruder<\/em>\u2019s hybrid form, a fusion of computer games and \u00adliterature, both distances players from the narrated events and, paradoxically, draws them closer through its participatory nature. On the one hand, there is a distancing effect as the psychological tension built up in the original narrative is replaced by a drive for asset \u00adaccumulation. Here, Bookchin\u2019s adaptation plays on an innate competitive instinct to accumulate points (or, in this case, advance through the plot). The story thus becomes objectified as \u201cthe reward\u201d in the context of the gaming economy. Yet, this emotional detachment is offset by the physical involvement (the interactive component) required of players.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Becoming an active participant, through the manipulation of the mouse and cursor, provokes an opposite emotional response to the \u00adexcitement of gaming: disgust at having \u201cparticipated\u201d in the Nilsen brothers\u2019 cruel acts. This response is reinforced by the unconventional gaming images. These offer a condemnation of the basic instinct to \u00addominate and \u00adobjectify others in order to further one\u2019s own ends. Thus the \u00adsynchronization of the narrative (the audio file) with the type of physical \u00adinvolvement required for its unravelling is effective in crafting a feminist critique of Borges\u2019 novella. <\/p>\n\n\n\n London-based artist Zoe Kavanagh\u2019s dms26713<\/em> was conceived to increase public consciousness with regards to asylum seekers held in UK \u00addetention centres. It presents one man\u2019s story through an interactive journal. Upon entering the website, the visitor is directed through a series of street photographs of an immigrant community to a Traveller\u2019s Pocket Book<\/em> thrown among other objects in an open and abandoned suitcase. Placing the cursor and clicking on this book opens an illegal immigrant\u2019s diary and, as one continues to click on links embedded in its pages, the man\u2019s story is revealed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This participatory narrative in which the worlds of London and Liberia intersect presents a story based on real events and people. We learn for example that the diary\u2019s author was a teacher in his native country and was forced to flee. He finds a job as a printer\u2019s assistant but then, arrested and incarcerated in a detention centre, he waits for two years before being extradited to Liberia. The hopelessness of his situation brings him to \u00adconsider crime and suicide. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Like the interactivity in Bookchin\u2019s The Intruder<\/em>, Kavanagh\u2019s piece exploits the potential of digital media to break down barriers between the website visitor and the story it presents. In adapting the traditional \u00adjournal from print to the digital medium, dms26713<\/em> is successful in \u00adbridging \u00adgeographical distances and overcoming reader apathy by \u00adinitiating a feeling of intimacy and engaging the visitor in an autobiographical pact that will bring the narrator closer. Its interactive nature transforms the visitor\u2019s experience by providing immediacy and direct testimony through voice clips of actual interviews with the detainee. What\u2019s more, a dynamic \u00adquality emerges from the presence of physical artefacts. In this digital format, a click of the mouse can fire off a rifle or make an apartment key appear. In a fashion similar to some children\u2019s books with, for instance, \u00adletters in envelopes one takes out to read, a princess\u2019 locket to wear around one\u2019s neck, the ability to interact with the narrative increases the reader\u2019s engagement with the protagonist and his plight. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The interactivity is further enhanced by the singularity of \u201ctextual\u201d events produced by a visitor\u2019s choices of hyperlinks. Since the \u00adnavigational paths through the narrative are not fixed (as in a traditional linear \u00adnarrative), multiple readings or narrative events are possible and increase the ways with which a visitor can interact with the story. In her media-specific analysis of hypertext, Katherine Hayles states that, \u201cAs a result of its construction as a navigable space, electronic hypertext is \u00adintrinsically more involved with issues of mapping and navigation than most print texts.11<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 11 <\/a> - Katherine Hayles, \u201cPrint Is Flat, Code Is Deep. The Importance of Media-Specific Analysis,\u201d Poetics Today<\/em> 25(1) (2004): 67-90, 83.<\/span> Of course, reading practices of print texts are not necessarily linear: one can flip forward and backward, skip passages, etc. The linking mechanisms of hypermedia however increase the mutability of the narrative as well as make possible the fusion of words, images and sounds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Thus, dms26713<\/em> adapts the traditional print diary to a medium that effectively facilitates the bridging of psychological and geographical \u00addistances. This, as a result, heightens public consciousness with respect to the plight of illegal immigrants. Moreover, hyperlinks, providing multiple pathways of navigation through the diary, give visitors greater autonomy in creating their own personal interaction with the narrative. They also, through the virtual presence of the protagonist\u2019s surroundings, voice and personal effects, increase visitors\u2019 emotional connection, rendering the detainee\u2019s experience more potent. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The two artworks examined here provide a sampling of digital media\u2019s potential to present and adapt text in innovative ways. The \u00adcapacity to connect to remote sites as well as alter and recycle digital artefacts has opened up opportunities for further experimentation with human \u00adcommunication and analysis of cultural production. Finally, \u00ad\u00adcomputer-human interface, in the form of interactivity, has greatly assisted the exploration of geographical and psychological spaces. <\/p>\n\n\n\n These net artworks are prime examples of how digital media and the Internet provide opportunities for interaction with text. In \u00adadapting \u00adnarratives traditionally bound to the page surface, these artworks \u00adhighlight the subversive power of adaptation. Bookchin\u2019s The Intruder<\/em> shows how a gamer\u2019s required participation in objectionable acts forces him\/her to critically engage with the misogynist elements of a novella. Kavanagh\u2019s dms26713<\/em>, as an interactive journal, tactically breaks down geographical distances and emotional apathy by rendering a detainee\u2019s experience more vivid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As we have seen, Internet art has the capacity to exploit and \u00adtransform traditional paths of textual communication by mapping content from an existing source text into a new space, non linear in nature, which promotes oblique, tangential and tactical activity. Generating multimodal and multilayered artworks that are critical of their source or embrace it, digital media and web technologies offer the possibility for intervention, an irresistible call for adaptation.<\/p>\nThe <\/em><\/em>Intruder6<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 6 <\/a> - http:\/\/www.calarts.edu\/~bookchin\/intruder\/ consulted Feb. 21, 2008.<\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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photos\u202f: permission de l\u2019artiste | courtesy of the artist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\ndms2671310<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 10 <\/a> - http:\/\/www.dms26713.com, consulted Feb. 21, 2008.<\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n\n