HELLOWORLD2001.gif
Jesse Siegel
2026
The artwork HELLOWORLD2001.gif functions as a memory archive; as a child and teenager I was quite an un-dedicated student, particularly with mathematics or any other rational pursuit. I was much more interested in language, history and geography. While not an altogether unusual divide, between left brain or right brain-individuals, it did come at a time when the world was actively changing, both on a physical and geopolitical level as well as on a more esoteric digital plane. The work itself questions our ability to preserve digital content, to reproduce it in a material and meaningful way, and as well as the inevitability of digital death as much as physical death.
Access to online networked culture allowed for a flattening of belonging, an accessibility to nicheness which was otherwise limited by physical closeness to the subject matter. Now, a teenager like me could freely access a world of Japanese anime, of pre-meme digital culture, of animated banners and looping graphical images, of hyperlinked, recursive signifiers. Around this time, I made my first website, coded in rudimentary HTML and uploaded online on my father's server, as with most test pages in those days, the content simply read "Hello World".
While otherwise unremarkable, it did mark the first time in which I personally modified the fabric of a network, in which I positioned myself vis-a-vis code into a publicly performative action of active participation, instead of passive consumption. That time is perhaps now becoming more nostalgic than ever, as most current internet users may upload content to a platform but cannot manually (digitally) alter the chain of interweaved code which underlies the now unfathomably vast and cryptic digital worlds we inhabit.
Much of my days of online consumption and participation were marked by hoarding of animated gifs, categorizing on my computer into folders, and later sharing them with friends, either via IRC clients such as mIRC or via my website. This was my first instance of digital hoarding, of archiving something which was impossibly growing beyond any of single entity enjoyment. Sharing was the only way to enjoy the trove.
Now many years later, sharing online is our networked culture's way of giving signs of life, of marking yourself safe in a disaster, of sharing the news of a major event in our existence. It has become synonymous with being.
