A third new, mysterious site (as per yesterday's post) is Silver Ladder. It's far larger and more complex than the other two we've explored this weekend.
It's hard to tell exactly what Silver Ladder is at first, but after an initial exploration it looks like net art. Silver Ladder's web site consists of a series of sparse HTML pages, very late 90s in style, each with simple, powerful graphics and often some short text. Many of these pages feature an embedded sound file, sometimes for ambience (these footsteps for this corridor), or for complementary content (reading over this text, a Beatles track over a gun image). There are a few embedded videos. Many pages have hit counters, with numbers in the hundreds or low thousands.
A series of short hyperlink chains constitute the site's hypertext structure. Starting from a single page, we can spot a handful of links, usually targets within a single image (again, very 1990s). There are some organizing nodes, like a five-way branching menu disguised as a terrestrial equinox chart, or this travel narrative, or a channel guide.
The content is difficult to synthesize. Taken in parts, we can find a series of themes: climate change, Alice in Wonderland (classic ARG note), the Cold War, cars and car commercials, electronic voice phenomena, and numbers radio. The title appears on a page describing a new technology, Silver Ladder (TM),
an artificially-engineered transgenic tissue sculpture. It is created using a variety of animal and vegetable DNA strands, which is then mapped onto a host chromosome palette. It is considered to be one of a handful of new species created from the basic building material now available to us through recent breakthroughs in modern science.
The overall effect is hard to describe. There's a distancing effect, as the opacity of images and text refuse our ability to get closer to the material over time. There is also a sense of political outrage or anxiety, with images of authoritarianism, waste, and CIA fear. Moreover the site is disturbing, even creepy. As one navigates page after page, the accumulation of horrific images and uncanny content (skulls, Raudive sounds, dead pigs) suggests something dark, morbid, or threatening.
Unfiction has been all over it, and their discussion leads in two very different, but probably linked directions. Via Myspace we see an alternate reality game (ARG) ramping up. We also learn that this could be a tribute site to Shane Watson, who seems to be dead. More on this in the next post.
Details aside, it's worth relishing the weird power of the first page. No context, no menu, just a bizarre screen, with difficult to hear sound. It reminds me of watching tv in the days before cable, late at night, stumbling across bizarre programs, sliced up by commercials and edits, like blasts from an alternate history.
(via ARG Netcast)
this is the best one yet, bryan! the first page i found myself in has audio from radiohead's song "treefingers" and the relevant lyrics. freaking cool.
Posted by: Cayden | September 30, 2007 at 14:36
Thanks, Cayden. And thank you for the Radiohead note - check out the blog entry from a few minutes ago, where I credit you.
Oh, and Silver Ladder is way, way stranger.
Posted by: Bryan Alexander | September 30, 2007 at 22:43
silver ladder actually reminds me a lot of jodi.org, which has been in existence since the mid-90s, and i'm pretty sure is continuously updated. jodi.org, though, is purely an art piece. cybersculpture, if you will.
Posted by: Cayden | October 01, 2007 at 01:31
Top notch! Given my proclivity for all things space related, I really like the site map!
Many of these sites remind me of My Pet Skeleton, which I would think you are familiar with already!
Posted by: peter naegele | October 01, 2007 at 09:22
I love the Skeleton. Used to run the screensaver.
Posted by: Bryan Alexander | October 01, 2007 at 09:40