advent the arrival of an important person, event, or development
The "advent" central to the MacClassics show is that of the "desktop", the home computer, the graphical user interface. I wrote MacAdvent for a Mac 512k computer, wanting to use aspects of this early Mac that were its defining characteristics. Somewhat arbitrarily, I decided to make a calendar. The days of the year each have an icon that can be changed by whoever interacts with this calendar. The icons also have labels that can be altered. After a while the icons I drew begin to reflect the changes visitors have made. It is this multi-user character, largely absent from the early Mac software I remember, that has defined my work since the "advent" of the WWW. It's not so much that I feel the icons improve with this interaction, though on occasion I'm impressed and amused by people's ideas. I'm trying to find ways to foster visual interaction that resembles conversation, that breaks out of the rigid forking fictions of the video game. A few potential transitions that come to mind as I think about this piece:
video game moo diskette network single user many users product collective production rom intensive software intensive birth of apple death of apple (?)
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