#retroweb

As requested by @emstheles , retroweb redrawww

Original under the cut:

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Cyberdelirium (2024)

Cyberdelirium is a digital poetry collection that reflects on a nostalgic vision of the 90s internet—an era defined by hope, freedom, and personal expression. This was an internet of people, not things, where users could shape their own corners of the web with a sense of individuality and creativity. The collection explores how different web aesthetics from that time influenced our perception of digital spaces and identities.

Presented on two iMac G3s within a staged artificial environment, the interactive poems invite viewers to explore the nostalgic allure of the early web while engaging with its history. Each poem is a fragment that probes the tension between human connection, expression, and the increasing corporatization of digital spaces.

Cyberdelirium asks viewers to consider how our relationship with the internet has changed over time—what we once worshiped as a tool of freedom and expression has, in many ways, become a space of identity loss and control.

Cyberdelirium underscores that the early internet was a fragmented and multifaceted space—one where individuality flourished, even as the seeds of the current, more centralized internet were being sown. The design choices are not merely decorative but serve as a commentary on how web architecture and layout shape our perception of the internet and our place within it.

The poems engage with themes of identity, connection, and memory within the digital space. The work asks viewers to consider the ways in which design shapes our online experiences and to reflect on what has been lost as the internet has evolved.

Cyberdelirium is a digital poetry collection that critically examines the evolution of the internet, exploring the complex relationships humans have with this ever-shifting space. Through themes of nostalgia, worship, and disillusionment, the poems reflect on the way the web has changed—from its early days full of promise and personal freedom to the more commodified digital environments we navigate today.

Cyberdelirium transports viewers into a digital realm that feels as though it’s flickering between past and present.

As users navigate the interactive poems, they encounter a tension between the content and the form. The retro design, with its purposeful imperfections, reflects the fractured sense of time and space within the poems, where meaning is always slipping, always just out of reach. Cyberdelirium invites users to wander through a digital landscape of memory and loss, where the act of interaction itself mirrors the experience of trying to grasp something that is already fading away.

By embracing the limitations and quirks of early web aesthetics, Cyberdelirium captures the tension between form and content, where meaning is shaped by the very structure that presents it.

each click unravels another layer of this digital world, blurring the lines between poetry and interface, between content and design.

Cyberdelirium opens up a space where users can interpret the meaning of their digital journey, navigating a landscape that is as much about the aesthetic experience as it is about the words themselves.

Cyberdelirium is a return to the chaotic abyss of digital subjectivity.

These poems, fragments of a past that was never fully real, stand in deliberate contrast to the sleek, algorithmically driven surfaces of today. They are echoes from the collapse of a collective hallucination—the remnants of an internet that once promised liberation, only to spiral into corporate-managed enclosure.

inviting viewers to wander through the ruins of the digital age. Each click is a step deeper into this disintegration—a lost future that can’t be recovered. In this space, nostalgia and estrangement intertwine, as every fragment of the past dissolves into the digital mist.

Chatting like it’s 1999…

Chat apps and Web chat rooms of the 90s before social media.