An early net art / web project considering the nature of digital archives, history and fiction. 2001
This was one of the earliest works I did on the internet (originally anonymously) that explored themes such as loss, archives, or the underbelly of archives —forgotten stories, unimportant events, people, objects, as that might relate to the larger narrative. I merged found web pages and original photography/animations to fuse together a non-linear narrative.
Yet, there is an interesting tension created here between what can be trusted as fact in the narrative and what is pure fiction: if the authorial voice is suspect, how can the user be certain that anything contained in the archive is accurate? By blurring the line between reality and fiction, Achong is emphasizing and interrogating the ability of computer-based forms to mask fiction through the creation of virtual reality. This strategy exposes a free-floating kind of cyber-anxiety that marks every information exchange we participate in: concealed from view and masked by the screen, we can be anyone we choose to be, reinventing ourselves and our histories at will.”
This project was included in:
- nt2 Nouvelles Technologies Nouvelles Textualités, UQAM, by Joanne Lalonde
- The installation and website were included in the book L’image ramifiée – le photographique du web by Elene Tremblay, published by Editions Vu, Quebec City, 2008.
- An essay by Lynne Bell for “MAWA: Culture of Community“, ABC Books, 2004
- Neural Magazine, Review, 2002
- StudioXX – Les HTMLELLES, 2001
- Rhizome in 2002.