Posted by Rob on Jul 23, 2010 in E-LIT

In the web_1.0 era, circa 1998, plucky Marsha creates a homepage dedicated to her favorite kind of angel and asks them to come and visit. They do, and they are not nice. This project shows three states of her homepage—spring, summer and fall—as the angels  progressively attack her page and her sanity. Clicking into the page’s crannies rewards the reader with hidden backstory about Marsha, her husband Mike and her best friend Bits.

My initial impulse with this site was the old Romantic love of ruins; I asked myself what would a ruined website look like. Of course in the intervening years we’ve all seen plenty of ruined websites, but it was an intriguing thought back in the day when 90% of homepages began with the word “Welcome.” I fulfilled another of my goals (responding to that barrage of “welcomes”in the 3rd state of poor Marsha’s site—a homepage that begins with the words “GO AWAX! GO AWAY! NOBODY READ ANY FURTHER MY WW4EX SITE IS CLOSED. A BAD THING HAPPENS HERE AND I CAN’T ERASE IT!”

The Fall of the Site of Marsha was anthologized in the Electronic Literature Collection Volume 1, the first gathering of electronic literature to be ensconsed in the Library of Congress.