This site requires Javascript to be turned on. Please enable Javascript and reload the page.

The Progressive Dinner Party Restored

plate38_felberbaum

This page is referenced by:

The Website

The Progressive Dinner Party’s website itself is fittingly displayed and organized like a dinner party, with a virtual table for “guests” to sit at, a menu of food items representing artists from various regions, and a list of “master chefs” and other honored guests to the dinner party. When entering the site, jazzy dinner music is played to help set the atmosphere. The entry page is even structured like a dinner invitation, offering a brief introduction to the site. Included in this invitation is a link to Carolyn Guertin’s Assemblage and two essays by Katherine Hayles and Talan Memmott.

The invitation directs guests to The Virtual Table, which is a triangular table similar to the one in Judy Chicago’s piece. Each of the 39 place settings are represented as stars, which users can click on to view the “plate” of each artist and link externally to their works. Alternatively, the plates can be accessed through the dinner menu, which categorizes the works by food based on the region the artist came from. In turn, these regions can be selected through an interactive world map on the website. These regions include Australia, Europe, the United States, Brazil and Russia, among others.

Each artist’s plate contains a customized picture with their name on it, which links out externally to their work. Though the main picture is always of the dinner table, additional props such as flowers, chess pieces and fruit add variation. Differentiation in background colors and patterns are also used. A black side panel with the artist’s name, the web genre, the title of the piece, and additional details such as places published can be found on the right-hand side of the screen. Also in each panel are links to the virtual table, the next plate, and endnotes.

By creating parts of the site with frames, an artists list can be scrolled through on the left-hand side most of the time. These are arranged alphabetically by last name, offering the user a quick and simple way to search. Frames are also used to separate the upper navigation bar so that it remains unchanged as users traverse the site, allowing them to choose where to go.

An Honored Guests page thanking the contributors is included as well. These contributors include Conversation Starters, Contributors of Candles, Pioneers in Cuisine, Flowers, Special Guests and Master Chefs. Clicking on a header will take the user to a list of names corresponding to that role. A Guest Book powered by GuestWorld is also provided for visitors to sign and leave notes in, though this appears to no longer function. Wrapping up the site are an endnotes page with links to Carolyn Guertin’s and M. D. Coverley’s sites, and a link to Jennifer Ley's online journal Riding the Meridian where it was published.

The original website published within Riding the Meridian can be found at this link: http://www.heelstone.com/meridian/templates/Dinner/dinner1.htm

An updated version of the site within the ELO Repository can be viewed here: https://elo-repository.org/progressive-dinner-party/
The 39 Works

As aforementioned, The Progressive Dinner Party contains 39 digital works by female artists, which were chosen from Carolyn Guertin's site Assemblage: The Women's Hypertext Gallery. These works can be accessed through their place settings, and are listed below in alphabetical order by title. Also included here are tags describing the work, which include descriptions in the previous page. These tags serve to provide a brief overview regarding the nature of each piece for the reader's convenience.

The majority of the works have been run through the Webrecorder for preservation purposes. Many can still be found in their original states on the web, though the updated version of The Progressive Dinner Party uses the URLS generated by the Webrecorder whenever possible.

Tags
Frames, Tables, Image Rich, Area Maps, GIFs, High Interactivity, JavaScript, Hypertext, Macro Hypertext, Micro Hypertext, Slideshows, Video, Audio, Page Refresh, Linear, Proprietary Software, Collaboration, Flash, Shockwave, Broken and Missing

Agatha Appears
by Olia Lialina
Frames, High Interactivity, Image Rich
Being Human
by Annie Abrahams
Tags: Macro Hypertext
Believe
by Diane Caney
Tags: Macro Hypertext, JavaScript
Blood Puppets: A Premillennium Manifesto
by Mez Breeze
Tags: Tables, Slideshows
Bound and Gagged
by Di Ball
Tags: Page Refresh, GIFs, Video, Audio
Brain Dress B
by Lori Weidenhammer
Tags: JavaScript, Tables, Image Rich, Missing
Charmed Horizon
by Kim Stringfellow
Tags: Tables, JavaScript, Image Rich, Missing
Cutting Edges or A Web of Women
by Ruth Nestvold
Tags: Hypertext
Dark Lethe
by Leonie Winson
Tags: Macro Hypertext, Tables, Collaboration
Distance
by Tina la Porta
Tags: Linear
Empty Velocity
by Angie Eng
Tags: Hypertext, Proprietary Software (Macromedia, QuickTime), Audio, JavaScript
Endless Suburbs
by M. D. Coverley
Tags: Hypertext, Frames, Java Applets
Girl/Birth/Water/Death
by Martha Conway
Tags: Hypertext
Glass Houses
by Jacalyn Lopez Garcia
Tags: Hypertext, Proprietary Software (Adobe PageMill)
Glide
by Diana Slattery
Tags: Shockwave, Flash, Audio, Broken
holes-linings-threads
by Alicia Felberbaum
Tags: Hypertext, Shockwave, JavaScript, Tables
Illusions, Philosophical Toy World
by Zoe Beloff
Tags: Proprietary Software (Adobe GoLive 4), Frames
Kokura
by Mary-Kim Arnold
Tags: Hypertext, Frames, Page Refresh, Collaboration
Light is Silent
by Jennifer Ley
Tags: Micro Hypertext, Frames, Tables
Light/Water
by Christy Sanford
Tags: Hypertext, JavaScript
LiLy Pond: a poststructural gardening thriller
by Jyanni Steffenson
Tags: Micro Hypertext, Page Refresh, Video
Los Dias y Los Noches de las Muertas
by Francesca da Rimini
Tags: Frames, Image Rich, Audio
Mother Millennia
by Carolyn Guyer
Tags: Hypertext, Collaboration
Mountain Rumbles
by Deena Larsen
Tags: Micro Hypertext, Frames
my body: A Wunderkammer
by Shelley Jackson
Tags: Hypertext, Area Maps, Tables
Noon Quilt
by Sue Thomas and Teri Hoskin
Tags: Hypertext, Collaboration, Tables, JavaScript
Pronunciation: 'fut' or: A Tool and its Means
by Claire Dinsmore
Tags: Flash, JavaScript, Area Maps
Rice
by Geniwate
Tags: Hypertext, Shockwave, Tables
Salome went to Soho to See Her Poster in a Show
by JeanNet and Raquel Rivera
Tags: Tables, Image Rich, Missing
Silicon Valley Journal
by Cathy Marshall
Tags: Micro Hypertext
skeleton sky: a millennium poem
by Carolyn Guertin
Tags: Hypertext, Tables
The Ballad of Sand and Harry Soot
by Stephanie Strickland
Tags: Hypertext, Frames
The Book after the Book
by Giselle Beiguelman
Tags: Hypertext, Tables, JavaScript, Page Refresh
The Electronic Chronicles
by Adrianne Wortzel
Tags: Hypertext
The Flight of A821: Dearchiving the Proceedings of a Birdsong.
by Marta Werner
Tags: Frames, Missing
The Intruder
by Natalie Bookchin
Tags: Shockwave, Audio, High Interactivity
The Roar of Destiny Emanated from the Refrigerator. I got up to get a beer.
by Judy Malloy
Tags: Hypertext, Page Refresh, Audio
*water always writes in *plural
by Linda Carroli and Josephine Wilson
Tags: Hypertext, Shockwave, Audio
Zones of Recognition
by Lehan Ramsay
Tags: Flash, Missing

39 Works Key | Contributors
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
Shockwave and Flash As of 2019, Adobe discontinued its support for Shockwave, while support for Flash will end in 2020. This means that any digital works that used these software programs will soon become obsolete. There are at least eight works within The Progressive Dinner Party that utilize these software programs, and though the Flash works could be easily viewed the Shockwave files would not play in most modern browsers. Fortunately, the Pale Moon web browser offers a downloadable Shockwave extension that allows files such as these to be viewed. At present, the Webrecorder can emulate browsers that support Flash but has yet to support Shockwave, but can record these files nonetheless. Thus, these works require browsers that support Shockwave in order to view them.

The Flash and Shockwave works are generally visual in nature, though some works use the software to play background music (such as *water always writes in *plural by Linda Carroli and Josephine Wilson.) Many of them are also highly interactive, such as The Intruder and Illusions, Philosophical Toy World. Still, the majority of them simply played videos or included moving imagery.

Animations created in CSS were not common until around the 2010s, so Flash and Shockwave were used to fill this niche during the explosion of the World Wide Web. But because Flash and Shockwave were so similar, the two competed for dominance (with Flash eventually winning.) Flash was released in 1996 as FurtureSplash by FutureWave Software, but was soon purchased by Macromedia and renamed Macromedia Flash. Macromedia also owned Director at this time, a software authoring system used for creating interactive CD-ROMs that predated the web. However, before it had purchased Flash Macromedia began outputting Director Files as Shockwave for the web, which meant Flash and Shockwave were fighting for the same audience drawn to interactive media. Eventually, Flash’s ability to play content quickly and its ease of use gave it an edge over Shockwave, despite the software program offering more robust features than Flash did. During this period of success Macromedia sold its products to Adobe, who in 2013 announced it was dropping support of Director, Shockwave in 2019, and Flash by the end of 2020.

Below are the works containing Flash and/or Shockwave files.
*water always writes in plural * by Linda Carroli and Josephine Wilson
The Intruder by Natalie Bookchin
Illusions, Philosophical Toy World by Zoe Beloff
Rice by geniwate
holes-linings-threads by Alicia Felberbaum
Pronunciation: 'fut' or: A Tool and its Means by Claire Dinsmore