an ode to the internet

Internet Culture has been a constantly evolving and developing phenomenon. It is dynamic in nature and diverges into many different subcultures due to the rise of online platforms such as Instagram, Youtube and Reddit. These digital spaces host communities, categorising similar social and political interests- making the internet both a divisive and unifying space. The internet can be presented as a lucid entity and this becomes truer as artificial intelligence and machine learning develops. It is also a coded habitat that has in many ways colonised us, forever changing the format in which we process and receive information as a species. In many ways, trying to define or even depict internet culture is frivolous as it is so complex and omniscient. But as everyone experiences it on a day to day basis, it is also a space which we collectively relate to such as memes. This video is my attempt at trying to highlight the rabbit hole that is the internet and its culture.

an ode to the internet, 2020 written narration and edited found-footage collage

Video Script:

We are all connected

A machine has raised us, gave us meaning, gave us expression

Let it carry you through the void and erase the pain
Be still as the truth unfolds you silent
As we pass through cyber space and time

Rainbows, sunlight, alternate tune
Rainbows, soft light, alternate view

Reality illustrates the relativity of time As we age a present day cyber psychosis

Eyes on the screen now

Revolution?
We do not even need to try We all are one
We are all connected

Let yourself be still, let yourself be subdued

Incongruity is the result of juxtaposition when one thing is placed in proximity to something incompatible or unrelated

We must celebrate the beauty and weirdness of the internets incongruous nature

Post modernism revelled in mashups and now we have inherited a collaged and fragmented visuality as the dominant standard

It is a developed aesthetics in a networked environment, this visuality is both urgent and trivial

We can be both ironic and sincere at the same time; the mysticism of the internet

We are enveloped and steeped as though we are in an atmosphere of the marvellous but we do not notice it

Internet culture is simulating because it is a simulation

It is both the real and imagined

Welcome the intoxication

Memes are the encoded emblems of an encroaching new world order fed to us for the stuff of global organisations and mass politicians

Visual internet culture and memes not only signify their content but mediate the social relations amongst us

They are tools to structure and reinforce imposed hierarchies Omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent
Do not question the internet for we are not worthy of it,
be blessed by the content, baby, content

And worship the aesthetic
Everything is for the aesthetic

a e s t he t i c

aesthetic aesthetic aesthetic aesthetic aesthetic

Appreciate,
Worship,
Adore,
Long live the internet.