Recapturing early web whimsy with HTML

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The HTML Vitality neighborhood advocates understanding HTML for what it fairly actually is: a language. And it celebrates the way in which the rudimentary character of that language calls for intention from the person. As an amalgamation of minuscule and complex artistic selections, a website constructed utilizing solely HTML is a type of self-­expression. Viewing a website’s supply code is as essential as navigating its interface. There are sometimes Easter eggs hidden in that code, corresponding to cheeky messages or citations taken from different HTML websites. In some ways, an HTML website captures one thing of the creator’s identification: what did that particular person select to construct, and the way?

This fascination with completely different functions of HTML can also be seen in bodily neighborhood gatherings typically known as “freewrites,” the place members of the motion get collectively to write down code. Sunday Websites and Fruitful College are among the many web sites that arrange these gatherings, typically integrating instructional components into their periods to empower extra individuals to hitch the motion. In the meantime, websites like HTML Evaluation showcase a few of its merchandise within the format of a literary journal. 

PROJECT 1

Terrarium of Many Sceneries

Ji Kim’s Terrarium of Many Sceneries collages snippets of footage from an outdated iPhone. As guests scroll by means of the location, photographs overlap and embedded audio clips play. When customers click on any picture, a small description of when and the place it was taken seems, alongside extra accompanying media. 
Kim’s website is designed to imitate the sporadic, layered nature of reminiscence. It’s a digital expertise that’s deliberately fragmented and overwhelming—like attempting to recollect a household journey taken years in the past. 

PROJECT 2

A Room with a Window

Shelby Wilson’s A Room with a Window is a website that enables for just one interplay: opening and shutting a set of window shades. The positioning deliberately conflates bodily and digital areas: Wilson performs with the concept of a browser as a portal to a spot with bodily boundaries and edges, but additionally maintains surrealist elements (the room doesn’t get darker when the blinds shut) and randomized components (the colour of the room adjustments on every go to) to spotlight the digital type.

PROJECT 3

HTML Backyard

Spencer Chang’s website imagines what a backyard may appear to be on the web. A number of “crops” manufactured from native HTML components develop, and the passage of time is acknowledged and noticeable upon every go to—seasons change, crops sprout and bloom. There’s no specific motion known as for—simply remark.

PROJECT 4

Prose Play

Katherine Yang’s Prose Play is an interactive poem that encourages customers to enter completely different phrases right into a pre-set sentence construction. Framing phrases as variables, the location explores the interactivity of the web. It places the literary idea of the “Loss of life of the Creator”—the concept that the that means of a textual content will not be decided by the creator’s intention however by the reader’s interpretation—within the context of code. 

PROJECT 5

Erich Friedman

Erich Friedman’s website is a private encyclopedia of his life, with archives of all the pieces from film scores to evaluations of mini-golf programs throughout central Florida. Organized into the classes of Math Stuff, Puzzle Stuff, Private Stuff, and Skilled Stuff, the location is straightforward in construction. It makes use of primary HTML to showcase Friedman’s eclectic pursuits over the previous decade, together with a listing of enjoyable information for each quantity from 0 to 9,999 and collections of math and trivia issues. The positioning doesn’t drive any particular motion. It merely stands as an exhaustive, candid portrait of Erich Friedman, occupying a small piece of the net. 

PROJECT 6

Museum of Screens

Toulou TouMou’s Museum of Screens is a website that homes browser video games created by sport lovers. As a way to work together with the video games on show, customers need to navigate the digital house like a bodily museum visualized in ASCII graphics. There are precise visiting hours, with a “relaxation day” chosen at random. 
Created to offer due credit score to beginner builders in the course of the period of Flash video games, TouMou’s museum goals to spotlight the significance of acknowledging authorship and the wealthy historical past of impartial video games. 


There is no such thing as a centralized supply for HTML Vitality websites: serendipity makes them discovering them really feel particular, like occurring upon a bit of road artwork behind a car parking zone. They’re not designed for discovery, nor are they optimized for any explicit motion. They merely interact with a customer on the customer’s phrases, providing a portrait of their creator. If websites like Google or Fb are the supermarkets and purchasing malls the place you purchase your requirements, HTML Vitality websites are just like the hidden gardens you occur upon, unmarked on any map. 

Tiffany Ng is a contract author exploring the connection between artwork, tech, and tradition.

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