The HTML Vitality neighborhood 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 consumer. As an amalgamation of minuscule and complex inventive selections, a web site constructed utilizing solely HTML is a type of self-expression. Viewing a web site’s supply code is as essential as navigating its interface. There are sometimes Easter eggs hidden in that code, resembling cheeky messages or citations taken from different HTML websites. In some ways, an HTML web site captures one thing of the creator’s identification: what did that particular person select to construct, and the way?
This fascination with totally different functions of HTML can be seen in bodily neighborhood gatherings typically referred to as “freewrites,” the place members of the motion get collectively to write down code. Sunday Websites and Fruitful College are among the many web sites that manage these gatherings, usually integrating instructional components into their classes to empower extra individuals to affix the motion. In the meantime, websites like HTML Evaluation 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Ji Kim’s Terrarium of Many Sceneries collages snippets of footage from an outdated iPhone.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 by way of the positioning, photos 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 web site 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 web site that permits for just one interplay: opening and shutting a set of window shades. The location deliberately conflates bodily and digital areas: Wilson performs with the thought of a browser as a portal to a spot with bodily boundaries and edges, but additionally maintains surrealist parts (the room doesn’t get darker when the blinds shut) and randomized components (the colour of the room adjustments on every go to) to focus on the digital type.
PROJECT 3
HTML Backyard
Spencer Chang’s web site imagines what a backyard may appear to be on the web. A number of “crops” made 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 express motion referred to as for—simply commentary.
PROJECT 4
Prose Play
Katherine Yang’s Prose Play is an interactive poem that encourages customers to enter totally different phrases right into a pre-set sentence construction. Framing phrases as variables, the positioning explores the interactivity of the web. It places the literary idea of the “Demise of the Writer”—the concept that the which means of a textual content will not be decided by the creator’s intention however by the reader’s interpretation—within the context of code.
PROJECT 5
Erich Friedman
Erich Friedman’s web site is a private encyclopedia of his life, with archives of all the things from film rankings to opinions of mini-golf programs throughout central Florida. Organized into the classes of Math Stuff, Puzzle Stuff, Private Stuff, and Skilled Stuff, the positioning is easy in construction. It makes use of primary HTML to showcase Friedman’s eclectic pursuits over the previous decade, together with a listing of enjoyable information for each quantity from 0 to 9,999 and collections of math and trivia issues. The location doesn’t drive any particular motion. It merely stands as an exhaustive, candid portrait of Erich Friedman, occupying a small piece of the net.
PROJECT 6
Museum of Screens
Toulou TouMou’s Museum of Screens is a web site that homes browser video games created by sport fanatics. To be able to work together with the video games on show, customers must navigate the digital house like a bodily museum visualized in ASCII graphics. There are precise visiting hours, with a “relaxation day” chosen at random.
Created to offer due credit score to newbie builders through the period of Flash video games, TouMou’s museum goals to focus on the significance of acknowledging authorship and the wealthy historical past of unbiased video games.
There is no such thing as a centralized supply for HTML Vitality websites: serendipity makes them discovering them really feel particular, like taking place upon a chunk of road artwork behind a parking zone. They’re not designed for discovery, nor are they optimized for any explicit motion. They merely have interaction with a customer on the customer’s phrases, providing a portrait of their creator. If websites like Google or Fb are the supermarkets and purchasing malls the place you purchase your requirements, HTML Vitality 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.