[artinfo] Tatjana Seitz on Digital Desolation

[Geert Lovink]

we're proud to announce the publication of the latest INC Longform publication

Digital Desolation-Amateurs, Aesthetics and the Aging of Web's Architecture

by Tatjana Seitz.

http://networkcultures.org/longform/2017/03/22/digital-desolation-amateurs-aesthetics-and-the-aging-of-webs-architecture

It should come with a disclaimer for 90's web 
nostalgia. As historians abandon master 
narratives and other disciplines deny historical 
models of explanation, there has never been a 
more paradoxical topic than the vernacular web 
and the authenticity of 90's web pages to revoke 
a historical narrative.

Tatjana's extensive research of the history of 
web design determines the accessibility of 
amateur websites as 'desolated objects in the 
digital.' Tatjana analyses these 'leftovers' of 
web design, offering a detailed insight into the 
origins of the pop up alert, the header feature 
and the personalized soundtrack attached to the 
amateur websites of the 90's. Tatjana refers to 
these features of the vernacular web as 'grammars 
of action' which allows us to measure the degree 
of transgression between the professional web 
design of today's global network of likes, shares 
and comments with the authenticity of 90's web 
design.

Is modern-day professional web design rooted in 
these naïve webpages? Tatjana Seitz multimedia 
rich longform is fully equipped to answer just 
this as the reader embarks on an interactive 
journey back to the fabrics of Web 1.0 through a 
kind of socio-technological analysis of digital 
artifacts and their relevance to the web induced 
generations of today.

Media theorist Tatjana Seitz graduated in 2016 
with a Digital Media and Culture Masters from the 
University of Warwick. Her interests span the 
intersection of economic, aesthetic and data 
driven concepts within the context of networked 
interfaces. Likewise, she is interested in 
interdisciplinary approaches to data 
interpretation and visualization.