Making a webpage, is not only a technical task, it is also philosophical one. Olia Lialina, internet historian writes, “Historically, making a homepage required answering existential questions. Do I have something to say to the world? What can that be? It is a bit more than the questions offered by social networks – “what are u doing today?” or, “who is in this photo?”
This project responds to the aestheticized, decontextualized version of an old internet that is sold to appeal to our collective nostalgia. I want to question how the cyberspaces of the 90s are remembered, the utopic, simplified digital space. To show that a surface level understanding of nostalgia can be commodified and weaponized by capitalism. My design project uses 90s amateur web aesthetics (bright, rich, personal, slow and under construction) to explore themes of nostalgia, archives, and the relationship between amateur web designers and “professional designers”.
Cyberspaces of the 90s are remembered as an open space for creativity, something that was decentralized and self-built, populated by communities and discussions, and hosted on these bright and funky pages. Juxtaposed with the fast, surveilled, and invasive, app-driven spaces of the modern day, it is easy to understand the appeal and demand for nostalgic content of the 1990s internet. Capitalism knows this and exploits our collective nostalgia for their economic gain; it forces the drive for innovation of art into atrophy and continues to mine for our cultural past in an increasingly invasive manner. What is left are the remnants, the digital ghosts that represent a better world that never came. In the digital age, where information is available at the click of a button, the past, present, and future begin to bleed into each other. While the World Wide Web and its instant connections have seemingly collapsed the confines of time and space, it is increasingly difficult for us to imagine and look forward to what the future could look like. We live in a state of atemporality; we look into the past for our futures and yearning for a time before the present. We are surrounded by our digital ghosts, and it haunts us.