BLOG PROMPT: My Boyfriend Came Back from the War
PLEASE ANSWER BY POSTING COMMENTS.
After exploring the site "My Boyfriend Came Back from the War" made in 1996 by Olia Lialina, what do you think the piece is about? How does is challenge expectations about web design and linear narrative? Keep in mind this is a work for net art from the very early days of the web. Imagine how people might have felt seeing it at the time. Here is the URL:
http://www.teleportacia.org/war/
Even though this website is considered part of the early days of the web, it still challenges the way we think of today's web art. I really enjoyed how the piece gave the viewer room to fill in the gap between the two images. Even though it does not follow the traditional definition of a linear narrative, the images gestures to an untold story that is easy to follow. I think that the early viewers would be confused by this piece of web art. It is different from other pieces of art that viewers are used to seeing in museums.
ReplyDeleteI thought this site was very different and kept me interested. Like Bethany said, even though it was in the early days of web, I know nothing like it even today. I really liked the spotty clicking on and off to take you through the story that she was trying to get you to think about. Considering what people back then must have thought, it must have been very intuitive and original to them and taken them by surprise. I would have never thought to make something like this especially in such an abstract, storytelling art kind of way. Its also really cool that the page its self is an art piece.
ReplyDeleteI feel that this piece is about the confusion and dissonance that soldier's loved ones feel upon them returning from the battlefield. There is no real way for those at home to understand what is going on inside the former soldier. As I can only imagine how much there would be to talk about, it makes sense that there are many different things that the user can click. The fact that they are in many different boxes goes along with this notion except by their varying topics it seems to show that the users inability to choose one before another is not unlike the emotions of the actual people's feelings. The black and white helps build contrast and also adds to the emotion of the piece. The different boxes really went against the notion that one can just click through the piece without really thinking like many of today's interactive sites do. I personally was not expecting this and it really made me consider what I clicked. The items were also not like how one would read something, also adding something unique. Even though it may seem out of touch with today's technology, but it still has both an interesting method as well as a unique method.
ReplyDeleteTo me, the piece is about the emotional turmoil that friends and families of soldiers returning from war experience. What do you talk about? How do you continue in a relationship that was put on hold? Also, someone who's gone through war is bound to change as a person, and I think it hints that, as well. This website challenges web design expectations by using a really simple setup to convey feelings and private experiences that often times are hard to discuss. The narrative is really interesting since you are given snippets of her life, and you are supposed to piece them together yourself. I think that at the time it came out people would have been very intrigued since it's a different format. I'm going to guess that most websites (like today) had content that you scrolled through, but this one is just point-and-click. It's simplicity is really well done.
ReplyDeleteThe piece is very deep and thought provoking. I imagine people, during the early days of the web, were confused and frustrated looking through this piece of art. Even today there isn't any popular art like this and for me it was hard to follow what was being said and in what order to click. That being said, I found it very interesting and very moving. There is so much emotion in the piece and you can feel it as it discusses soldiers coming home and going off to war. Even though I personally haven't had to experience this, I feel like I have an insight into the emotion these families feel when a loved one goes off to war. Very powerful.
ReplyDeleteThis piece is very complex and abstract. It provokes emotion and causes people to put themselves in the shoes of people who have had experience dealing with relationships with soldiers. Initially when I was looking at this website, I was slightly confused because of the way it is structured and the randomness of the dialogue. After I got to thinking, I realized maybe the point of it was to slightly confuse viewers. People who haven’t had first hand experience dealing with soldiers, war, and a loved one coming home from war can’t possibly begin to understand the emotional toll it can take. This website gives a glimpse of this to people who aren’t familiar with these types of situations. This challenges expectations of web design and completely ignores the expected format of a linear narrative. When I think of a linear narrative, I think of a blog that consists of only words, that are read from left to right and top to bottom. In this narrative, none of that is happening. It is not read left to right or up and down and the narrative consists of few words. I think it is even more powerful that this blog can provoke such emotions with such few words though. People at the time were probably surprised that she took this approach at a linear narrative. I’m sure at the time this was one of the first narrative that was structured in this form. Along with that, I’m sure people had a similar emotional response to this piece back then as I and my classmates are having now.
ReplyDeleteI went through the story a few times, going in a different order of which panel I clicked. The first time I had no idea what was going on. I thought maybe I was just too dense to understand it. The second time, I tried to carefully choose which order in which to advance the story and it started to make more sense. The third time, I tried even more carefully, and it was pretty powerful.
ReplyDelete(Note: I purposefully did not look at previous comments, so if I am repeating someone or completely off about this interpretation, that is why)
I believe the story is about the conversation between a young woman and her boyfriend who just returned from the war, and they are trying to find their tie to one another again. They have spent so much time apart and lived separate lives, and they are trying to catch up to one another, which is seemingly impossible. The soldier feels like no one will understand what he has gone through in the war, and the woman feels like he will never understand what it was like to live a "normal" life without him, not knowing if he would return. I think she may have dated someone else while he was away, and she was warned that her soldier may not come back as the same boy that she fell in love with.
The use of the panels was very interesting. To me the fact that more and more panels appeared as the conversation progressed represented the fact that the two people were becoming more and more separated from each other, putting up walls between them in defense of their actions or behavior. When the conversation got really heated, it seemed like both of them were even torn between their own thoughts, and they were sectioning off those feelings within themselves as well. Where there were two panels, now there were four. Then more and more panels appeared with more and more conflicting thoughts. I know I have been in conversations with significant others that felt this way, where there were only two people in the conversation, yet there were MANY opinions and feelings working their way in. I think even the grandmother's opinion got a box at one point. Perhaps this signifies that even a conversation between two people is never simply between two people. There are conflicts within themselves, and the influence of outside parties and environments.
As for how this piece would be perceived by audiences in 1996 versus now, I think either way it takes a bit of a creative mind to be able to "get" it. I know I am not super creative, and this was a challenging concept for me to grasp, and it took a few tried before I was able to follow the story (a little). As for the design and use of paneling, I think it is actually probably pretty similar for audiences of both times. Yes, I am old enough that I was looking at websites in the 90s and creating them in the early 2000s, and the use of panels were generally used for simple organization, usually just one side bar for navigation. It was kind of brilliant of her to add panels throughout the piece to convey her story in a visual way. Also, on modern sites panels aren't really visible, so it was kind of a nice throwback for me :)
I really enjoyed this piece! I think for the time it was made, it is fairly complex and demonstrates its concept in a very simple manner. I think the point of the piece is to demonstrate the possible outcomes from when someone's significant other returns from war; I think this concept is further demonstrated by having the viewer click on each scenario to reveal something else underneath. Depending on the order of which item is clicked, the viewer could end up with slightly varied results from another viewer. I think this represents the fact that no one really knows what will happen to the relationship or the person's mental health when they arrive back in their country.
ReplyDeleteThis piece is different than anything I've seen. I have heard of 'Linear Art' but I wasn't exactly sure what it was. These two images confused me but the more I looked at them and thought about what the artist was trying to say the more I understood what was going on. The title of the piece, "My Boyfriend came back from War" gave me a clue as to what the message was. I think this piece is to represent the longing and sadness families and friends feel while their loved one is away at war. This piece is simple, yet complex, because the distance between the two images literally represents the distance between families and their soldiers.
ReplyDeleteI found this website to be an abstract piece of art more than a website. I didn't realize how many links were in the images and found myself clicking away exploring the content of the website. While I felt confused at times, I think that this was a good way at getting into the mind of someone who is in love with a soldier who just came back from war. It's meant to be confusing because it's hard to understand what's going on in the mind of these soldiers sometimes. The simple complexity of the piece causes the viewer to think about each small snippet of information given through each click and try to think about how it all connects together.
ReplyDeleteOlia Lialina's website seemed to be a combination of emotions, thoughts, questions, and memories of a soldier's girlfriend. The confusing nature of the site makes the viewer feel as though he/she is sifting through the contents of someone's mind. The vagueness of some of the unfinished sentences and questions opens the site to broader interpretation and relevance to the experiences of nearly anyone with a loved one off at war. This design is highly interactive, allowing each viewer to make a unique decision about the order of composition. If this website setup was able to slightly confuse me today, I imagine that people in 1996 had quite a hard time wrapping their head around it. But, I think that was the point.
ReplyDeleteFor the time period it was created, I think it was pretty complex. I believe that there were lots of emotions, feelings and thoughts that spun around the page like they did in Lialina's mind. The story of a military girlfriend whose lover is off at war and returns is a powerful and sentimental story. The page was kind of confusing to navigate, but it was very interactive. It was very vague, the user may not know where exactly to go or where to click next to follow the story. It took me a few times to understand the story and what exactly was going on.
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