Netscapes

Jenna deBoisblanc
[ United States ]

As online worlds increasingly infuse or supplant analog realities, our relationship to the natural environment grows even more tenuous. Netscapes, a series of interactive web vignettes, reflects upon cyber-environments, and in particular, the extent to which digital representations of natural landscapes reflect existing attitudes towards nature.

Desktop wallpapers serve as a salient and sardonic example of the Anthropocene’s ethics. While climate change threatens to collapse global ecosystems and unravel the fabric of civilization, we adorn our desktops with uncannily-idyllic Caribbean beaches. While fires rage in the West, we paper laptop monitors with sweeping panoramas of Yosemite. At the same time, we build captivating virtual worlds and mine cryptocurrencies on digital platforms that are abstracted away from the petrochemical infrastructure upon which they run.

As a means to subvert digital escape and foreground the environmental crisis, this body of work injects anthropogenic detritus and manmade disasters into online spaces. By forcing the viewer to confront climate change in browser-based environments, I hope to advocate for a more responsible visual language for the web—one that supports and prioritizes a sustainable and balanced relationship to our true home.

Primary Project Website: https://jdeboi.com/netscapes/#/

• Medium: Custom software (HTML / JavaScript)
• Year Produced: 2021

Jenna deBoisblanc

Independent Artist

Jenna deBoisblanc is a net artist, new media artist, and teacher from New Orleans, LA. She received her undergraduate degree in physics from Pomona College (Claremont, CA) and her MFA in digital art from Tulane University (New Orleans, LA). She has shown work at local galleries in New Orleans (The Front, Good Children), as well as at light festivals in the Southwest (Luna Fête, Light Up Albuquerque). Her clients include Toyota, the Aloft Hotel, the Florida Aquarium, and NASA.

Artist Website: https://jdeboi.com/