“A Web Odyssey”

By Serge Bouchardon and Team

Please interact with the full piece in a separate browser here.

In 2008, Serge Bouchardon published an online artistic game (made with Flash) entitled The 12 Labors of the Internet User. In this work, the internet user is regarded as the Hercules of the Internet. Often, the user has indeed the impression to have to achieve Herculean labors. It can be a question of blocking popups which keep coming when one would like to see them disappear (the Lernean Hydra), cleaning the inbox of its spam (the Augean Stables), or driving away the advertising banners (Stymphalian Birds).

Thitrteen years later, Serge Bouchardon chose to deal more specifically with the navigation on the Web. A Web Odyssey is based on The Odyssey and the figure of Ulysses trying to navigate back to Ithaca. This interactive narrative features the different episodes of The Odyssey (the Cyclops, Circe, the Sirens, Calypso…). The goal of the user is to reconnect to the e-thaca network. Parallels are then drawn between the oblivion caused by the lotos flowers and the infinite scrolling of social networks, the eye of the Cyclops and the webcam which monitors the Internet user (and which must be blinded or disabled), the Underworld and the Dark Web… The ecological question is also addressed through the Sirens, who feed on human flesh, and the streaming platforms which consume a lot of energy and data and feed on the resources of our environment.

Here are the themes covered in the different episodes:

Lotos-eaters: social networks and addiction
Polyphemus the Cyclops: webcam and surveillance
Circe: social media and cyberbullying
The Underworld: Dark Web, transparency and opacity
Sirens: streaming platforms and energy consumption
Charybdis and Scylla: ransomware and dilemma
Helios: General Terms and Conditions (GTC) and awareness
Calypso: online video gaming (clicker) and dopamine loop
Back to Ithaca: password, captcha and identity

The Greeks associated a mythological divinity with each phenomenon. They accepted not to be able to understand everything, and the gods often served as an explanation. Centuries later, don’t we have the same relationship with digital technologies, with which we sometimes have an almost religious relationship? Are human beings free to make their own choices or do they have to obey their Fate, the Greeks wondered. Are human beings simple pawns, constrained in their choices, or sovereign creatures with free will? When we navigate on the Web, we can often feel the same tension as the one felt by Ulysses during his perilous journey…

This narrative, which articulates literary, educational and recreational dimensions, is available in French and English. It invites us to reflect on our digital milieu, social media, platforms… and more broadly on digital technologies.

Authors

Serge Bouchardon is Professor at the University of Technology of Compiegne (France), where he teaches interactive writing. His research focuses on digital creation, in particular digital literature.
As an author, he is interested in the way the gestures specific to the Digital contribute to the construction of meaning. His creations have been exhibited in many venues in Europe, America, Africa and the Middle East. They have been selected in various online reviews (bleuOrange, The New River, Hyperrhiz, SpringGun).

Research: http://www.utc.fr/~bouchard/
Creation: http://www.sergebouchardon.com/

Sirine Ammar-Boudjelal, Adrien Charannat, Lisa Colombani, Alexandre De Balmann, Loïc Husson, Louis Pineau and Alexandre Truong are computer engineering students at the University of Technology of Compiegne. Adrien Charannat, Lisa Colombani and Alexandre Truong are also UxD Master students.