My Boyfriend Came Back From The War
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Introduction
Created in 1996 by Olia Lialina, My Boyfriend Came Back From The War (MBCBFTW) is a very early work in the genre of Internet Art. An interesting aspect of this work is that it started be re-mixed quite soon after its creation. A second interesting aspect is that it is a demonstration of a rather unique and perhaps possibly useful user interface. If you have not already, please have a look at My Boyfriend Came Back from the War. It will only take you a few minutes to run through the story.
This wiki provides links to several re-mixes of MBCBFTW sometimes using code created by me but more frequently blending code and images generated by others with the original text and images from Olia Lialina.
There is a portal with links to the various remixes, an analysis of the original work, links to the original works by Olia Lialina and her collaborators and links to possibly useful assemblies (created by me) of her source data.
I have begun a discussion of the rather special user interface of MBCBFTW and in due course I also hope to add a meta-analysis from the perspective of a student of the history of art.
This work was created as part of the coursework for:
History and Theory of Networked Media Art ~ CNM 290 / Art 298
Instructor: Christiane Paul
First release: 2008-02-19
Theo Armour Re-Mixes
One of the happy and significant aspects of MBCBFTW is the number of times the site has been remixed and the apparent encouragement by the artist and the generosity of the artist in making data files available to the public in order to create a remix. The remixes range from blogs to games to PowerPoint presentation. One can say that this was a very early Free & Open Source Software (FOSS) project.
from the moment I saw some of the early re-mixes in Christiane Paul's class, I started thinking about re-mixes. Since I find hacking into other people's code a fun thing to do, I have remixed MBCBFTW in a number of silly ways. You may access each of these re-mixes by clicking on the links below.
The interesting thing is that I have not yet found a 'better' way of accomplishing the task that Olia Lialina sets out to do. My investigations and theories for this will be covered in a section of this wiki at a later date.
Further remixes are likely to include a drop down menu structure, a project management / critical path program remix (perhaps using LiquidPlanner) and possibly a remix linking to Flickr images.
The issue with a pull-down menu remix is that I have only found a menu that nest up to six levels of sub menus, while MBCBFTW would require 16 levels of nesting. Also highly nested menus are difficult to deal with because you have to be able to track your cursor with your mouse extremely accurately otherwise the menu closes down.
The issue with Flickr is the lack of images in Flickr for adverbs, prepositions and other very frequently used words. Another fun thing to do might be to create a machinima reenactment of MBCBFTW using a virtual world application.
And yet more: Register with Twitter, Jaiku, Pownce, Plaxo, Tumblr and Facebook, etc with user name MBCBFTW and same password and then enter at the data...
And one could have fun with yellow sticky notes (or a slate), a digital video camera and YouTube.
2008-03-06: re-mix as a wiki
I am also working (gently and slowly) on a remix designed to be better than the original in terms of user interface. This version would be in 3D, have expand/contract characteristics similar to the docking menu on current Macintosh computers as well as reminders that certain locations have already been visited. Whether I can get this work to prototype level before the end of the semester remains to be seen. I have downloaded and started to learn Blender in order to build a prototype.
Click on following topic titles to to launch the applications...
MBCBFTW: MindMeister MindMap Remix
Created: 2008-02-17
Source of mind map software: MindMeister.com - a free online service.
Completeness: Every text item of the entire original site has been mapped. Because the application does not support insertion and storage of images, none of the original images are available.
Further work: Not likely - unless I find a mind map that opens up with all the branches collapsed or hidden and/or if a mind map allowed display of selected images.
Notes: Creating this mind map helped me discover that the coding logic of MBCBFTW wqas quite a bit simpler than I had first thought. I had pre-judged that the flow followed a far more complex overlapping topology than it does in reality.
MBCBFTW: Interactive MindMap Remix
Created: 2008-03-19
Source of interactive mind map software: I think from dhteumeuleu.com
Completeness: About thirty of the phrases from the original work are included.
Future Work: Not likely until I find an easy way of adding images to the code.
Notes: This an adap[tation/hack just one of Gerard Ferrandez's many attractive FOSS applications that are works of Internet Art.
MBCBFTW: Advent Calendar Remix
Created: 2008-02-29
Source of advent calendar software: Wait Till I come - a very concise piece of coding.
Completeness: Contains 21 of the text phrases and three images.
Future Work: Quite possible. Currently the placement of the items is quite random (as Advent calendars usually are). I could see placing the items with a defined path or flow including branching. Also it would help if the items that had been opened indicated visually that they had been opened. An even better improvement would be the ability to either over write or to branch depending on the desired flow (as does MBCBFTW).
Notes: This re-mix is a variation on the the traditional Christian Advent calendar on which there are 24 doors to be opened for each of the days in December before Christmas. The background image is that of a victim photographed in the First Chechen War.
MBCBFTW: List Expander Remix
Created 2008-02-29
Source of List Expander software: CSS Globe
Completeness: This work incorates every phrase and image from the original MBCBFTW.
Future Work: Possible. The are some very nice aspects about this simple and elegant piece of coding, but because the overall display is so linear / one-dimensional and MBCBFTW is so two-dimensional that it may not be worth it.
In the current revision, some of the images are duplicated in order to follow the original work more closely. A future revision may have the duplicated images removed.
Notes: This application allows you to open and close text in a similar manner to using the Outlining feature in Microsoft Word.
MBCBFTW: Quiet Web 2.0 Remix
Created: 2008-03-19
Source of 3D parallax menu: nav-3D from dhteumeuleu.com
Completeness: Fewer than half the text and images from the original MBCBFTW are included.
Further Work: Unlikely. The movement and flow that occurs when you use a good number of images with this application make this cut down version seem somewhat pathetic.
Notes: This is another great piece of software from Gerard Ferrandez. This was a first pass at re-creating the site in a real-time motion almost as it appears in the B/W 1996 original. See the next re-mix for a better usage of the algorithms.
MBCBFTW: Web 2.0 Remix
Created: 2008-03-19
Source of 3D parallax menu: nav-3D from dhteumeuleu.com
Completeness: About half the phrases are included. The images are all from Gerard Ferrendez's original site.
Further Work: Highly probable. Even though this remix lacks some of the navigation features of the original it is so visually mesmerizing that it must be finished.
Notes: Gerard Ferrendez's images and music seem to be almost perfect complements to Olia Lialina's text. I have a long-standing ency of Ferrendez's abilities to source great images.
This needs verifying: This remix uses technology tools that were available in 1996 but were not yet well understood. In other words it is possible (though highly improbable) that this remix could have been written in 1996. In order to verify this assertion, I will try to run this web page on Netscape 4.7.
The Original Source Files
My Boyfriend Came Back from the War
The original work of art created in 1996 by Olia Lialina.
This site links to re-mixes of MBCBFDTW as well as to the source files for the work and to bio-data of the team that constructed the original site.
Useful Source Data Files
I use the following files in helping me to create new re-mixes of MBCBFTW
All the images from MBCBFTW in a single zip file.
All the text strings [words] and file names of image files from MBCBFTW in a single text file.
My boyfriend came back from the war Double Click
The dialog of the web site is from the point of view of a woman, or at least the point of view of somebody who wants to marry a male soldier and who wears a pretty dress ("Do you like my new dress?") . She is probably young as she lives with her family and is conscious of a special unchaperoned period of time with her boyfriend ("after dinner they left us alone").
The discourse opens with the young woman talking to the reader in the past tense and then changes to the woman talking directly to her boyfriend in the present tense. The transition is handled nicely through the use of pauses caused by needing to discover several clicks in between the two dialogs.
Although there is a dialog going on we only hear / read her words. It is as if we are listening to just one side of a telephone conversation. Also we may not be hearing the entire conversation. It's as if the line were occasionally breaking up. In any case the tone is highly conversational and thus we only glean snippets of the thought process.
The topics are wide ranging from "Can anybody kill you?" to "Do you like my new dress?" The intimacy ranges from very distant "Where are you? to very close "Will you marry me?". The revelations range from near shattering "But... it was only once... Last summer... And if you think...Why I should explain?... Don't you see?" to charming "I keep your photo here"
The magic of the site has something to do with the time it takes to read the words. There are only just over two hundred words in the entire site. When you read these words in a straight text file, it takes only a few seconds to go through the entire text.
On the site, however, because of the clipping and discovery it can take several minutes to get through the site. the last text you read rattles and echoes in your mind until you reveal a new text or image. Thus time is slowed down from high-speed reading of several hundred words per minute to much more a conversational speed a few dozen words per minute.
Another device that might also be causing a slow-down of the tempo of the work is the ongoing appearance of errors in punctuation, grammar and case. Were these deliberate? It might be so because the spelling is perfect.
We feel the whole as an authentic performance. The words ring true. The stark images mix in well. We do feel we are in a special hyper-reality space translated from some other country, intervening in another's life at a special moment in that other's life.
Other points of interest
Second guessing the artist: Given that Olia Lialina is a Russian living in Russia and that the piece was created in 1996, it is likely that the fictional soldier would have been coming back from the First Chechen War 1994–1996.
"Haven't you seen tigers there?" This may be a reference to OMAN - a generic name for the system of special units of militsiya (police) within the Russia. Their motto is "We know no mercy and do not ask for any." Their insignia is a tiger. Several OMAN units served in the First Chechen War.
The woman's dress is red, green and blue. The colors of the Russian flag are red, blue and white. The colors of the Chechen flag are red, green and white.
The artist does intervene into the work with her signature which eventually appears as a link to her email address in the lower right corner. It is adjacent to the "Kiss me" and "Will you marry me?" and begs the question of whether the work contains autobiographical notes.
I have thought about the best way to abbreviate the title of the work. For example, earlier versions of this work used My Boyfriend... But given that the artist uses 'MBCBFTW' within the original work itself as part of her 'signature', I have standardized on MBCBFTW. And, after a while, you get quite used to typing it. As of 2008-03-03 rthere were 124 entries when you Google MBCBFTW.
There are 46 phrases with just over two hundred words in the work along with 14 black and white images. See the Archives for further details.
If you are going to remix MBCBFTW into a program where entries must be in a linear order. Say, for example, you want to type out the work on an old typewriter, the question is in what order would you type the phrases. You might 'play the game' and copy what appeared on the MBCBFTW screen, buu if you are lazy (like me) then I suggest that you use the order that has been used by the artist herself which is the order list in the Archives.
The order given in the archives is interesting for several reasons. The artists signature is not the last item as one might expect, bit appears somewhere near the middle. The start of the piece has been moved to the end. I always move it back to the beginning for my remixes. The script ends on a questioning note with, simply, a "what?"
An Interesting User Interface Paradigm
The more I played with MBCBFTW, the more I came to understand that it offers a rather unique user interface well worthy of examination. Here is a first pass at identifying what are some of the special aspects of MBCBFTW:
- All the action takes place on a single screen. No scrolling, panning or zooming needed.
- the interaction is two dimensional. Your next action can be anywhere on the two-dimensional screen. The actions are certainly not in some top down or linear order.
- At all times what is yet to be done is visible. What has been done is over-written with what remains to be done.
- It is up to you to choose what you want to do next. At any given time there there tend to be a small number of available options or routes open to be worked on.
- If you keep clicking on what is click-able, eventually you click on everything that can be done. There is an end, but which event comes last was determined by the choices you made earlier.
- When you have done something it disappears. It is over-written with the next thing to be done - unless there is a choice or unless the the particular branch has come to an end.
Let us look at some of the remixes I have created and try to see where they fail to replicate the special and unique progression of action items offered by MBCBFTW:
Mind Maps
Cons: Much panning and scrolling is needed. Too many items visible all at once. Completed items do not disappear. On the contrary it is the undone items that can be made to disappear.
Advent Calendar
Cons: can only handle a few events. Completed items do not disappear. In traditional format, random placement of items does not allow for branching into two or more paths
List Expand
Cons: Viewing alternative itenms require lots of scrolling. When more than a few items have been opened it becomes very difficult to see what is available to do next.
3D Parallax Menu
Cons: Requires a lot of backtracking in order to accomplish all the tasks. Very difficult to ascertain whether or not you have finished everything.
Other Scenarios
Let us look at a few other interfaces that might be of interest.
Pull-down Menus: The issue with normal pull-down menus is that all items are pretty much equal and they require lots of clicking and mousing around on order to see what's going on. So they are quite good for dealing with dozens of items that can be expressed in very short phrases.
Wizards: Wizards are great when there is a single linear path to be followed. They are almost useless when there are several possible actions to be done.
Use Case Scenarios
Imagine that Mrs Jones has to teach some whippersnappers how to make a picnic lunch with several different sandwiches. Mrs Jones wants an easy-to-read action chart that will show the whippersnappers exactly what to do next. She wants to be able to click on something when its done and have the next action to come up in its place. In the course of preparation, eggs need to be boiled, bread needs to be toasted. So while the eggs are boiling and the bread is toasting, Mrs Jones wants the whippersnappers to see what else they can be doing in the meantime. Perhaps they could be getting out the peanut butter or washing the lettuce. On the other hand she does not want them to see actions such as peeling the eggs or cutting the toast because these actions are not yet appropriate and would make the page too complicated. She only wants, say half a dozen actions that are doable right now and that have not yet been done to be visible.
Some time later, It's Mr Jones' turn to teach the geezers how to build web sites. He needs them to register domain names with GoMammy, install ParagraphPress, populate a MySqueel database and carry out several other tasks. Since the geezers have ADD, Mr Jones needs a simple play-by-play score sheet telling them exactly what they can do next so that the work can be accomplished before they fall asleep.
People who are familiar with Project Management applications will note that these descriptions will remind them of actions on the critical path. People familiar with David Allen's Getting Things Done will sense a notion of the Next Action that can be physically done.
So what would be the next physical actions in developing the MBCBFTW paradigm into a usable tool? The most likely route would be to create some scenarios in a mind map application such as Mind Meister and then export the map into an XML file. The XML file (or a conversion into HTML nested lists) could then be turned into a web page with JavaScript routines handling the click such that accomplished (clicked-on) items disappear and are replaced by the next item or by branches when there are multiple possible next actions. Then, given that a mind map is two-dimensional, it is possible that the spatial relationships on the mind map could be used to determine the locations on the MBCBFTW screen.
The uses for such a software application might be for creating streamlined project management, writing hyper-fiction and for uses where visualization of spatial parallel processing might be useful.
Notes From The Schoolyard
Being notes taken while working on this project
2008-03-02 First Post
The reason for this flurry of activity on MBCBFTW, is that I am taking Christiane Paul's course "History of Networked Media Art". A requirement of the course is as follows:
- "develop a project proposal of your choice throughout the semester. Proposals will be discussed in class during the course of the semester. The final proposal should be a sketch, mock-up, or prototype for your project. It does not have to be a fully developed project."
Since I am only auditing the course I have the choices of following exactly what Ms Paul asks for, doing nothing or doing whatever comes to mind. For the moment I am taking the latter route. I say this because I have no idea where this project is going nor how to identify when it is finished.
So "What did I learn while taking this course?" is an odd question since we are only a few weeks into the semester, but I found out some interesting stuff in my first class: College classes may be a lot more fun when you are older.
When I was young my strategy was to figure out the minimum to do at the last possible moment to get the grade I needed to get through the system. While you may think the pre-meds were different, it turns out their strategy was just to do more work and to do it earlier. Essentially pre-meds try to figure out the minimum to do at the last possible moment to get the grade they needed to get into medical school.
Yes, of course, there was joy of learning in the process, but on the whole the classroom experience was shadowed by college life, career choices and all the learning how to live choices young people have to make.
Taking a class when you are older can be more fun, because you wanted to take the class, because you know about a lot of stuff the professor may or may not know as well and because you can allow the class to take your brain down less explored paths. Putting it another way: Young brains are quite empty while old brains are quite full. Which place would you prefer to explore a twenty room house or 60 room palace?
Sorry, we are getting way off the topic of MBCBFTW but the point was to get us thinking about "gaming the system" - which if I start taking about that is going to take us even further away.
So what was it about MBCBFTYW that wanted me to start remixing it? Did the answer to the question "Is it art?" come to me in a resplendent flash of light? Was I overcome by the sea change as described by little Mr Benjamen standing behind the curtain? Not really. All that happened was I thought to myself "I can do one of those". I had a Tony Robbins neuro-linguistic moment of perceiving myself doing something and was thus able to do it.
This is what art does. Yes, of course, "Is it art" is an art in and of itself. And contemporary art is always revolting. But the essence of art is that it is a cause that engenders an effect. Some works start clicking light switches before the canvas is dry. Others lie around for centuries before they cause a spark. Some works (perhaps the majority) create or little or no fire. So it goes.
[placeholder so I don't forget I'm thinking this: I'm thinking that "Art is a verb". Does this give added meaning to the archaic "thou art" or "Our father who art in heaven..."?]
When Giotto started painting people in a realistic way - showing emotion and in a space with perspective - was he leading or following the movement into the Renaissance and humanism? When the Sculptor Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi created the statue of liberty and made her face the ocean rather than the land, did he understand that America was about to take on the role as the big "decider" of the world for a century or so? When Picasso painted "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" did he know that he would enable to humanity to begin to describe what was not there to see?
So that is the thought of the day. Great art is a behavior modification tool. It's not a very good one. Just interview all the people coming out of the Tate, MoMA or Hermitage and see if they think that their behavior has been modified. But most of the other behavior modifiers are sticks. The nice thing about art is that it is one of the carrots.
