Shitty Battlestations

I began emailing people on the Internet in 1997 and chatting much earlier by means of a friend's AOL account. At this point, I'm more attuned to my feelings when I'm talking online and exchanging thoughts with strangers and friends than when I am expressing myself in person. Risks are easy to take. In the following pages, the aim of the group emails is to provide a number of voices on the topic of free use of time and the access to limitless visual and aural information that the Internet provides. ❧ The form of this essay is akin to the form of its reception, and its aim is to generate conversation through a process of exchanging personal emails through a group email thread. The form itself is communicated through light: distracting, penetrating, revealing. But the form is also a chain letter, a writing prompt, a correspondence between strangers and friends. The boundary that shapes this form is defined through its flexible engagement with time, the way one might image a wormhole would work. It's like a fibrous membrane fostering different methods of processing to bleed through and influence one's perception of different realities. ❧ This essay analyses a network technology paradigm shift by means of a major social network tool (email) from a group of individuals who have spent equal parts of their life with and without Internet access. We reflect on meaningful past events and images through a fresh perspective, influenced by metadata and fictional reality. The emails take Shitty Battlestation images, a codex of images I have been collecting, and consider the outcome of the use of networked technology and how this can be depicted in relation to other visual documentation of labor. Several of the emails also explore themes of escapism and euphoria. In the end, the limit of detachment is defined as an end point that can never be attained, no matter how loose the touch one has on reality.