Crash Course
Crash Course, by Jim Punk, is a piece that takes over your computer. Thousands of windows open and close in a manner of seconds, blasting different sounds, songs, and noises over each other for a few moments and then disappearing. Many aspects of this work allude to the potential for war in the Middle East, from camels walking in beat across the desert, to military airplanes landing over and over again. Aside from directly showing things that make us think of the volatile state of the world, Punk creates a virtual space that acts much the way our world has been as of late. Crash Course is chaotic, violent, and almost out of control. The viewer can click their way through the different pages if they don’t close to quickly, but this pretend interaction is only a part of the work in that the piece seems to take you where ever it wants regardless of whether you interact or just sit there mesmerized. Punk uses sound in the same way that visual aspects of the work are presented. The original page that is opened continues to stay open for the duration of the experience, with a repetitive drone, that sort of seems to allude to the world, continuing its revolution, regardless of what humans do. As pages are opened, closed, resized and moved across the screen the sound jolts from one noise to another, existing only for a few seconds before the droning comes to the forefront of our senses again. This depiction of the world is especially pertinent since the medium used to create the work is part of the reason our world is in a state of turmoil. The technology and business necessary to support that technology is one of the things that non-western countries have been rebelling against. The web itself is a form of homogenization. For better or for worse it cannot be denied that the more connection there is the more different cultures become similar. Crash Course does not seem to take a stance in terms of ideology, rather presents through the medium of the net the turmoil and confusion of our current world.