The HTML Power group advocates understanding HTML for what it fairly actually is: a language. And it celebrates the best way the rudimentary character of that language calls for intention from the person. As an amalgamation of minuscule and complex inventive choices, 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, comparable to cheeky messages or citations taken from different HTML websites. In some ways, an HTML website captures one thing of the creator’s id: 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 group gatherings typically referred to as “freewrites,” the place members of the motion get collectively to jot down code. Sunday Websites and Fruitful Faculty are among the many web sites that manage these gatherings, usually integrating instructional components into their periods to empower extra individuals to hitch the motion. In the meantime, websites like HTML Assessment 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Ji Kim’s Terrarium of Many Sceneries collages snippets of footage from an outdated iPhone.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 via the location, pictures 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 making an attempt 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 in addition maintains surrealist elements (the room doesn’t get darker when the blinds shut) and randomized components (the colour of the room modifications on every go to) to spotlight the digital kind.
PROJECT 3
HTML Backyard
Spencer Chang’s website imagines what a backyard would possibly appear to be on the web. A number of “crops” fabricated 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 referred to 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 “Dying of the Creator”—the concept the that means of a textual content isn’t decided by the writer’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 the whole lot from film rankings to critiques 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 info 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 online.
PROJECT 6
Museum of Screens
Toulou TouMou’s Museum of Screens is a website that homes browser video games created by recreation fans. With a view to work together with the video games on show, customers should navigate the digital area like a bodily museum visualized in ASCII graphics. There are precise visiting hours, with a “relaxation day” chosen at random.
Created to provide due credit score to novice builders throughout 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 isn’t a centralized supply for HTML Power websites: serendipity makes them discovering them really feel particular, like occurring upon a chunk of road artwork behind a car parking zone. They’re not designed for discovery, nor are they optimized for any specific 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 procuring malls the place you purchase your requirements, HTML Power 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.
