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Ghosts in Our Machines

© Lewis laCook

I suppose spirituality, like sex, is just one of those topics that's bound to come up at some point when human beings gather together. It's perfectly natural, after all; crawling about on this revolving rock as we do, under these strange and borderline incomprehensible skies, it's easy to wander into some pretty spectral speculations as to the origins of it all, and its final destination. And while a cold hard motherboard may seem an antithesis to mystic speculation, Sue Thomas, Helen Whitehead, and Simon Mills of the trAce Online Writing Centre have offered, in the latest issue of their online journal frAme (f r A m e 6: N e t: S p i r i t), an intriguing, rhizomatic examination of the peculiar postures spirituality may take when combined with life online, through the efforts of six hypermedia artisans: Duc Thuan, Linda Carroli, Randy Adams, Deena Larsen, Talan Memmot, and Eryk Salvaggio.

Duc Thuan, a prodigiously talented Vietnamese writer, programmer and web developer, has given voice to the motherboard itself with his piece ReadMe.txt. Appropriating and skewing texts common to just about every computer (those ReadMe's that provide system information, useage notes, and ceaseless technoid edification), this 26-year-old wunderkind has woven a spellbinding text of HTML magic that owes as much to oldschool ASCII art as it does to the latest Flash-y designs. And what impresses me most about ReadMe.txt is just that: the design. While much of the text is code and appropriated software licensure, Thuan has translated the quips and iconography of this language into a bedazzling visual feast. My favorite page is the software license page, wherein our man Thuan has, through a brilliant use of color and adroitly-placed image, fashioned the profile of a face, complete with buttons in the ears that, on click, initiate both a tabla and a digeridoo. With these buttons, one can mix their own version of the page's music--a stellar example of interactivity at its finest; each reading of this page can be customized, at least sonically.

Speaking of oldschool ASCII-art, Eryk Salvaggio gives us a fascinating hyperessay on Zen and ASCII. For those who don't know, ASCII stands for American Standard Code for Information Interchange, and is the character-base for everything you read on the web. Drawing parallels between Japanese brush style and the

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