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The Progressive Dinner Party Restored

plate1_rimini

This page is referenced by:

"Los Dias y Los Noches de las Muertas" by Francesca da Rimini

“A ghost work of counter-memories, opening thresholds of impossibilities outside of pan-capitalism -- a drifting carnival of souls which gathers together the spectres of recombinant desires, US military residue, dead girls and Zapatistas.” -Los Dias y Los Noches de las Muertas Description

About the Work
Los Dias y Los Noches de las Muertas is a hypermedia kinetic fiction piece created by Francesca da Remini. Though the work highlights revolts worldwide, one of its main focuses was the violent treatment of demonstrators by police at the 2001 G8 summit in Genoa. The work was also inspired by a meeting with Ricardo Dominguez, whose work on the Electronic Disturbance Theater Timeline highlighted the war waged against Mexian Zapatistas in 1998. Some of the work’s central themes are anti-violence, peaceful protest, and anti-globalism, along with the excess of global capitalism.

When entering the site, a 25 minute audio recording plays narration, music, crying, shouting, and other sounds denoting violence and heartbreak. In addition to providing links to resources and descriptions of the G8 revolt, a pop-up window displaying four pieces of constantly changing text and imagery are also provided. The images consist of violence, capitalism, graffitti, and protest, while the text speaks of world peace, space exploration, economics, unity, and world domination. Also available is a long page of credits, attributing the concept, coding, and graphics to Francesca da Rimini and the sound to Michael Grimm and Kevin Henderson. Additionally, financial assistance is credited to the Visual Arts Craft Fund of the Australia Council.

About the Author
Francesca da Remini is a new media artist living in Australia. She has also been known as doll yoko, liquid_nation, and GashGirl. Having worked in the field since 1984, she has created a number of electronic works and net art including Flesh Meat, Identity Runners, and Soft Accidents. She also worked with the cyberfeminist artists’ collective VNS Matrix during the 1990s, and was awarded the New Media Fund Fellowship by the Australia Council in 1999. In her online biography, Francesca da Remini explains her fascination with the net, stating that “I like the freedom of ghostliness … it's easier to slip through the predictable binary reductionist screen/s to a space which once again feels uncolonised by histories … sometimes the net is the only space where I don't feel crazy … maybe because it is the only safe space to be completely excessive.”

Screenshots
Here is the homepage of Francesca da Rimini's "Los Dias y Los Noches de las Muertos". It provides instructions on how to view the work, as well as a download of the 25 minute audio clip that plays in the background. From here, users can also access the pop-up window with changing images and text and links to resources.
This is a pop-up window, divided into four sections with changing text and imagery. Themes of violence, capitalism, protest, economics, and world domination.
Here is the popup window with another combination of images. Though these change automatically, users can also click on one of the four spaces to change them at their own pace.
This image links users to an online dossier regarding G8.
This is a screenshot of the credits page, where sources for sound and imagery are listed. Creators and contributors to the work are also listed.
This image links out to an essay written by Wu-Ming Yi regarding G8. There are multiple of these for the user to explore.

Links to the work
"Los Dias y Los Noches de las Muertas" has been recorded in Rhizome's webrecorder. Additionally, it has been crawled by the Wayback Machine. A link to Remini's plate in The Progressive Dinner Party is also provided below.

View "Los Dias y Los Noches de las Muertas" in the Webrecorder
View the web archive link
View Plate

“27th G8 Summit.” Wikipedia. Last edited 6 July 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/27th_G8_summit. Accessed 6 July 2019.
Brousseau, Simon. “los días y las noches de los muertos.” ALN | NT2 . 2010, http://nt2.uqam.ca/fr/repertoire/los-dias-y-las-noches-de-los-muertos-0. Accessed 6 July 2019.
“Da Remini Bio.” subsol.c3.hu. http://subsol.c3.hu/subsol_2/contributors/dariminibio.html. Accessed 6 July 2019.
Da Remini, Francesca. “Credits.” los días y las noches de los muertos. https://dollyoko.thing.net/LOSDIAS/CREDITZ.HTM. Accessed 6 July 2019.
Hoskin, Teri. “da Rimini and Tonkin: the viewer at work.” RealTime Magazine. Issue #54 April-May 2003, pg. 23. http://www.realtimearts.net/article/issue54/7056. Accessed 6 July 2019.
“TDR: The Drama Review.” Project Muse. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/43230. Accessed 6 July 2019.
39 Works Key To present the 39 restored works, a system was devised involving tags and organizing them alphabetically by title. The works themselves can be viewed in alphabetical order in the next page, and the tag descriptions can be found here. These tags serve to provide a brief overview regarding the key features of each piece for the reader's convenience.

Tag Summaries

Area Maps
Area maps are used to create images with clickable areas. They are usually presented as a <map> tag towards the end of an <img> tag, followed by a list of screen coordinates. Though rarer, area maps is included as a tag because of the unique functionality it introduces, allowing users to hover over various spots on an image to access different hyperlinks.

Audio
This is for works that include auditory components.

Broken or Missing works
Unfortunately, not all of the local files for the works within The Progressive Dinner Party could be obtained. This was either because the work no longer existed (such as Slattery’s Glide) or because contact could not be made with the author for missing files. When possible, an external link to the most complete version of the work was provided in the website.

Collaboration
This tag is applied to works that were produced by multiple artists.

Flash
Works that used Adobe Flash to produce animations or sounds were given this tag. Unfortunately, all support for Adobe Flash in modern web browsers will be dropped in December 2020; thus it was imperative that these works were restored within the Webrecorder to ensure their survival.

Frames
Frame sets are used in HTML to divide the screen into sections, or "frames", that coexist while simultaneously remaining separate from each other. These are works that use frames as main components for separating menus, images, buttons, and more.

GIFs
GIFs (Graphic Interchange Format) are still or animated images used by works to introduce animations with technology other than software such as Adobe Flash or Shockwave.

High Level Interactivity
On occasion, a work will demand greater participation on the users part than average to experience the work.

Hypertext
This tag specifies works that focus on hyperlinking text as a way of communicating messages.

Image-rich
Though many of the works featured in The Progressive Dinner Party include images, some of them cannot be easily navigated without them. Such works may be using images as the main way of presenting the piece. Others may include images to provide critical visual cues, such as written cues (like Home, Back and Next), or non-written cues (like arrows and other icons.)

JavaScript
Along with using the web coding languages HTML and CSS, JavaScript was oftentimes used to add more interesting functionality to a work.

Linear
For works that are presented in a linear fashion.

Macro Hypertext
This includes hypertexts that are unusually large, usually as a result of collaboration from one or more artists.

Page Refresh
Refreshing the page to redirect users to another is a fairly common practice among these web artists.

Proprietary Software
Many of the works relied on software produced by companies. Though Adobe Flash and Shockwave are considered proprietary, they were unique and used often enough to justify separate tags.

Slideshows
Artists on the web have many different methods of presentation at their disposal, which includes featuring their work as a slideshow.

Tables
This tag is given to works that utilize tables in an important way, such as for images or overlaying content.

Video
This is for works that include video components.

Shockwave
This tag is applied to works utilizing Adobe Shockwave. Though support for Shockwave was dropped in April 2019, Shockwave plugins are still available for certain browsers. Thus, it was imperative that these works were restored with the Webrecorder to ensure their survival.
The Website | The 39 Works