Cutting Spaces by Mez Breeze, is one of her first net.art projects from the 1990’s, where this particular work represents the metaphorical and even literal transformation that is done to ourselves when we decide to create an identity within the online community. She chose to use poetry to express her ideas and various identities that she created within the Internetscape. The piece is a combination of prose, poetry, various hyperlinks, and multi-colored text that tells the story of a woman and her fixation of finding a writing partner online and the act of self-mutilation. She explains that when we create a web-identity, we are reforming and forming a new self that is both a physical and virtual experience. This avatar representation or extension of our real self can adopt a new attitude or express something that we either can or choose to be in the web world when encountering others in the same space. Author John Reep argues that “when such boundaries are penetrated—or in this case,cut—we “bleed” either figuratively or literally, transgressing the pre-assigned boundaries and perhaps venturing into new, previously forbidden or inaccessible territories.”[1] In cyberspace, the boundaries are more complicated and perhaps indistinguishable because an avatar or the users identity becomes disembodied, since the physical body transforms into a virtual space of the computer box and virtual web. Therefore, the virtual body or avatar is not vulnerable to the natural elements, but instead vulnerable to coded computer language and only comes alive through symbols and text. The existence of the avatar or formation of identity is not possible without the underlying essence of computer language.
Sources:
http://www.hotkey.net.au/~netwurker/cutspace.htm
http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=postid;view=text;rgn=main;idno=pid9999.0004.107