Dear Mr Ron Tye,
This is going to be a strange email, both for me and for you. I have no idea how you’ll respond to me writing you out of the blue like this. So let me start off by assuring you that I am not a creep, a crazy person, or an internet troll.
Ron, I have been following your…
This is one of the most brilliant pieces of new media art I’ve ever seen. Taking the form of a Facebook message of admiration for a participant in a “get rich quick” internet scam, the artist initially seems interested in discussing the participant’s aesthetic choices for a series of images placed inside Craigslist ads. What unfolds from there is the use of heavy research and various ‘net-detective’ techniques that unravels the narrative of the artist’s on-line journey from said Craigslist ads to the participant’s facebook page, leaving readers with a feeling of unease at the artist’s ability to track a single user across so many different discursive platforms. The way the narrator in the artist’s letter moves from ‘excited fan’ to ‘total stalker’ is jaw droopingly slow. It’s not until the artist begins to discuss the participant’s marriage that the viewing audience begins to see just how ‘stalkerish’ the artist’s techniques have become. While the piece opens with a discussion about the over-blown kitch that is modern “net-aesthetic”, the end-discourse is about privacy and our inability to separate our private net presences (on sites like Facebook and private YouTube accounts) from constructed net identities like ‘Luzy’ or ‘tyepilot.com’. It discusses the way that romantic notions of net connectivity break down in the face of IRL objects like love and money. It’s an examination of the co-opting of internet aesthetics by functionless artists and the futility of internet start-up companies in a post dot-com bubble burst world. And ultimately, it’s a letter about love and loss and the heartbreak that occurs when you put everything into one basket only to have the basket break. Seriously, this deserves 10 minutes of your time.
