WDWTW?

WDWTW? builds a social and open-ended narrative. Every visitor to the piece can tell their story within the context of victimsIn different sciences the term victim has different meanings. The term is most often use in criminology, religion, psychotherapy and New Age context ... of war and human rights abuses. Based on the work My boyfriend came back from the war (MBCBFTW, Olia Lialina, 1996, landmark in the history of Net.Art), it’s a space to gather facts and stories that depict the socio-political unrest of this so-called “expanded” and “interconnected” world.

WDWTW? traces a parallel fictionality to that established by the Russian artist. Twelve years on, the atmosphere generated by such black and white contrasted space gets a revision to include the notion of interactivity, which involves not the mouse click but the user/visitor text input. Hence the title for this work complies to the premise often used by researchers who strive to find scarce victimsIn different sciences the term victim has different meanings. The term is most often use in criminology, religion, psychotherapy and New Age context ...’ testimonies in places for freedom.

Interface based on processing code both for manipulation of text and image database as for creating the hook with IRC chat servers.

Non-linear open narration is a common thread between both works, WTWTW? and MBCBFW. In our case, the story is not about love, but about war and related traumatic tensions, to be told by people chatting with each other.

WDWTW? will be a place for lost memories, the buried facts that don’t quite belong to a place that has once been an artists’ playground and today seems more like a shopping mall (back in the 1990s the internet had another face). If WDWTW? helps to open a space where people can reflect on human rights abuses and war, its purpose will be fulfilled.

WDWTW? gathers testimonies from anonymous internet visitors to recreate the symptomatology of a victimIn different sciences the term victim has different meanings. The term is most often use in criminology, religion, psychotherapy and New Age context ... via text that appears on screen in an attempt to connect so many people around the world that live under such conditions.

The original work of Olia Lialina was created in 1996 when web browsers and internet technology was beginning to capture public attention. In 1996, interactivity was the magic word and the hyperlink was used to create a new kind of narrative and storytelling. This is where MBCBFW hit the nail on the head. Today (in 2008), interactivity in the sense of hyperlinks has been exhausted. We have shifted into the so-called “social web” days (for me, the web has always been social and this new slogan obeys the rule of mass marketing strategies).

So, in the case of WDWTW?, the narrative will be made up of two directives:

- Inclusion of the main symptomatic PTSDPost-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is one of the anxiety disorders that occur after a person sees, is involved in, or hears of an extreme traumatic stressor ... (Post-traumatic stress disorderPost-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is one of the anxiety disorders that occur after a person sees, is involved in, or hears of an extreme traumatic stressor ...) categories; a database made up of sentences (10-20 per category, still to be determined).

There will be three categories: Re-ExperiencingReexperiencing means that the traumatic event is persistently reexperienced ..., AvoidanceThe principal clinical features of PTSD are painful reexperiencing of the event, a pattern of avoidance and emotional numbing, and fairly constant hyperarousal ... and HyperarousalThe principal clinical features of PTSD are painful reexperiencing the event, a pattern of avoidance and emotional numbing, and fairly constant hyperarousal ... (feelings and sudden states of being). Sentences should be short, a maximum of 20 words each.

- Access to the piece by anyone in the world and the ability to “re-code”, according to life experience and the messages on the screen (considering the lack of visibility of documents that can enrich a world memory for future analysis and comprehension). In WDWTW?, user input plays a very important role since the piece is not closed to just click from the viewer/reader, he or she is invited to express, to tell the story, to answer the question: Who Did What to Who ?

Such input (answers to the question) will appear in the middle of the screen and will be sent also to a chat room (#victimsIn different sciences the term victim has different meanings. The term is most often use in criminology, religion, psychotherapy and New Age context ... in irc.goto10.org <http://irc.goto10.org>) where everyone visiting the piece will be assigned a name in the order of: victim_000933 (the number corresponds to the time when they join the piece). This will also allow anonymity.

Who Did What To Who? is a question used by researchers in areas where they need to gather information related to human rights abuses. When the user accesses the website, he/she is invited to use an input line to answer this question, and given an explicit invitation to tell their story.

In the background, every visitor to the page will by default also join a chat room (#victimsIn different sciences the term victim has different meanings. The term is most often use in criminology, religion, psychotherapy and New Age context ... in irc.goto10.org http://irc.goto10.org). Users will be assigned an automatic nickname under the sign of: “victim_1053941”. The number is taken from the date/millisecond when the user joined the chat room.

This chat room is the meeting point for the piece and represents an extended space to develop social interaction that can also be accessed via web browser or via an IRC chat client.

The messages that come back from IRC lose their “authorship” since not even the nickname appears on the interface of the web. They feed the interface that becomes a repository of stories. A two-way communication channel that goes from the underground of the internet (IRC) to reach full visibility (on the main page of the LabforCulture site) and all the way round, since everyone logging into the website is also part of the chat room under the name of victimIn different sciences the term victim has different meanings. The term is most often use in criminology, religion, psychotherapy and New Age context ... as stated above. Thus messages will cross from public to private, from unrepresented to represented and from silent to loud.

Other things that can be included in future versions:

• the use of the wikipedia bot searching for concepts related to war/love/hate/politics/law

• images to be retrieved from flickr, concepts from wikipedia according to dictionary keywords typed by the user

• java typewriter machine (human-like effect of typing in real time).