Summary:
The work consists of a collection of custom built, fully coded websites in the style of an early 2000s webpage. Each is built in collaboration with an artist, attempting to act as part social medium, part portfolio, and part of their own practice. It also includes my work from expanded practice as part of the collection, which is accessed through an online gallery space. Many of the people I feature are not artists by trade, so by giving them a platform they own completely I hope to foster future artistic endeavours while challenging both the exclusionary nature of the gallery space and the lack of control over your work that signing on to social platforms entails.

Context:
As part of the first generation to grow up connected our entire childhood we have seen niche internet subculture become just, culture. I watched as community forums died, tech billionaires were made and startups showed us genuinely novel methods of communication, only to be consumed or copied by monopolistic corporations as soon as they became threats. In the move to optimised algorithms, invasive advertising and centralisation, the unique character of the internet was lost. By returning to the philosophy and process of the early internet I've created pages that my collaborators can identify with and own, displaying their work how they want it to be shown.

Research and Process:
The foundation of this project lies in digital archaeology - exploring the Wayback Machine, Geocities, and its contemporary echo, Neocities. I sought out forgotten corners of the web: static pages that haven't been touched in decades, yet still persist. These remnants of the early internet became both inspiration and blueprint. Yet the true blueprint of these sites was the lack thereof, total freedom, yet steep limitations set on you by both your coding knowledge and the technology. By choosing to code these by hand, I have embodied the ethos of the nascent internet, and have built a platform that feels authentic, not simply nostalgic for its own sake.