Revision as of 22:29, 30 December 2025

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THESIS OUTLINE #2

What will the text be about?

The text is about the world wide web: both a space and a craft, full of various forms of expression all linked to one another through the hyperlink system.
🠒 A space that doesn't exist physically but acts as its own piece of land, with its politics, its rules, its rule-breakers, its controversies and its own magic. Whether it be through design trends, platform monopolies or F/LOSS and community-led initiatives, the web is the best depiction of how humanity functions. (It could be in that way a great thing to send in space for a Voyager Golden Record revival.) Its part of magic resides -- in my opinion -- in the community-centred projects it bears. Those projects (https://neocities.org; fediverse platforms; the wikimedia foundation, shadow libraries) show the clear presence of intention and care from their creator(s) and that is what I mean with magic. That very place we reach by tuning to our inner selves with their feelings and sensitivity, allowing us in return to shape our intentions and share them with others, to connect. Like hyperlinks.
🠒 A craft practised by hand-webmakers, those who build websites by writing code instead of using website generators such as Wix or Cargo. Based on analysis of indie web and small web practices, I intend to demonstrate in what ways web making is a craft. Those practices involve mostly personal, goofy, fandom, library websites, such as the ones hosted on neocities.org or more specifically the whole ecosystem of websites created and maintained by Daniel Murray, aka melonking.

The text is about individuality as shaping and owning who we are on the web: the importance of having your own corner of the web, your own garden -- that may or may not resemble those of Maggie Appleton or Matt Prebeg -- away from the big corporate platforms and their seamlessness that erases our capacity to customise and express our identities.
This is about highlighting modes of online expression that rose with the web, but not so much as a nostalgic exercise. The point here is to list key elements that do not only pertain to the web medium: choosing colours and fonts because we like them, adding images (with alt text!) and customised buttons, to build a strong personal identity, etc. These elements constitute a basis for a more expressive web, one that does not simply follow user interface trends (minimalism).

The text is about physical bodies and gestures: exploring how we can reconnect and reinvest the physical when crafting the web; investigating the ways in which by doing so we can reconnect to our individuality, to others and start putting intention and sensitivity at the core of our creations. This idea was born while reading JR Carpenter's "Handmade web", where she connects the physical to the digital. It now flourishes with my own practice of web crafting and input such as D. Murray's in an interview with Kendal Beynon:

Zines are a very good manifestation of a webpage because they look like webpages, making one is a lot like making a webpage, and they bridge the same temporal gap; a zine is ephemeral but can be eternal if it's looked after, just like a webpage. (ref: Web craft an interview with Daniel Murray unthinking.photography)

The text is about politics, resistance: all those investigations lead to a common topic. By reinvesting our bodies we might shape ways to resist against automation and online seamlessness.
This relies on practices such as Do it with others, what Doriane Timmermans refers to as "shoulder2shoulder against crypto dev" and code-a-thons, where people gather physically to code together. It can also talk about more metaphorical physicality, like: can CSS be seen as the make up of a website? How does that take shape? In the most plain sense, this is about acknowledging our physicality, the gestures and positions of our bodies while in the process of making a website: does it start on paper, with a collage, by having a specific music or food? How do we type on the keyboard, and with what type of keyboard? Are we lying down, sitting, standing? Do these answers change according to the type of web project we're making?

How will that story be told? (form and mode of address)

The text aims to be a sort of chimera writing, acting as a guide, an essay and the result of a detective investigation. dev ++

KEY ISSUES

wip title: The Wicked Witch of the World Wide Web

INTRODUCTION (1000)

1. Incantations and spells (2000)

Investigation into web making as a craft, the importance of the gesture and the role of intention when making, creating.
Here I will take inspiration from various artists and web practitioners, as well as in my own practice. I will seek to demonstrate my intuition: creating relies on intention, intention is then embodied and this gesture shapes the craft. This interrelation should also be true when creating for the web.

2. Behind the smoke screen (2000)

How nurturing sensitivity, distancing oneself from corporate platforms and shaping the web you want is a stance against automation and seamlessness and a path to connecting and tying links.
This part will largely quote or at least mention conversations I've had with Doriane Timmermans, Miriam Suzanne and Raphaël Bastide, who all agree on the fact that the corporate-owned web works against any expression of self and sensitivity and that is something we must fight against.
I will dive into the design systems used by big corporations, that in the end define the overall look of websites. By praising our sensitivity and individuality we might unlock the true power to counter-act this ruling system and become actors instead of putting up with what is handed "freely". Circling back to intention.

3. Alchemy (2000)

Highlighting the links between web crafting and physical gesture, through examples such as zine making and CSS-print, or hybrid initiatives such as hackathons and code-a-thons. This exploration leads to shaping resisting tools and spaces that intertwine in the way alchemy transforms a given matter into another in a equal-value exchange.
When a website becomes a zine, or a zine leads to a website.
When a community transcends the screen to gather in real life (html day, z event, declarations workshops).
When a digital space creates a community (les sans pagEs, minecraft, )

note: maybe this is the conclusion and i have only 2 key issues?

CONCLUSION (1000)

How can the web act as a magical tool for resistance against fascism?

0. Context and definitions

1. Magical resistance crafts

2. Online fascism: AI aesthetics (analysis of AI as the new magic)

3. CSS rituals and hand made web: fighting back + entry on CSS print: low cost home made pamphlets

4. Magic craft and web craft share practices and messages. They also share politics and communities that allow them to merge and become a strong tool for resistance.

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The CSS grimoire - a CSS printed manual for personal websites

- gathering CSS snippets and an index of people and initiatives + resources

- with a submit option for collaboration

prototyping

1. The indie web puzzle
a puzzle poster made of screenshots from https://smallweb.cc/ to map out a corner of the indie web
>>> See: User:Kiara/Research/WebSpell/Prototypes#Prototype_#5_The_Indie_Web_Puzzle

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