Network: Websites

I Kiss You!!!!!

members.xoom.com/_XOOM/primall/mahir/index.html

"Welcome to my home page!!!!!!!!! I kiss you!!!!!" beams Mahir the genial accordion-playing Turk, introducing visitors to his disarmingly direct homepage. "I like sex", he proclaims, "Who is want to come TURKEY I can invitate... She can stay my home". Mahir, here displayed in full portrait, sunbathing, table-tennis-playing and genially gesticulating modes, also posts an abbreviated CV: "My profession jurnalist , music and sport teacher, I makepsycolojy doctora." This page could be a cult in the making, even a rival for those singing and dancing ham(p)sters, though an animated version of Mahir might be a bit much. There is one already, sort of, at http:// 216.169.122.124/rayn/turkstud.shtml.

Communimage

www.commun image.ch/engl/

There are lots of these communally contributed displays on the Web, ranging from Kodak's millennial family album to art projects. This one looks a year further ahead, to Expo 01 in Switzerland. Is it a quilt, is it a collage, is it an "interactive collective sculpture"? It's lots of uploaded images and texts stitched together, and you can zoom in and out or explore individual sections. And you can get to know your "picture neighbour". At some point closer to the event itself, the assemblage threatens to leave the Web and take physical form. Meanwhile you can mail bits of it to your friends as

e-postcards.

I SPY 2K

www.the cooker.com/ispy2k

More global collaging here, but this time tongue in cheek and vaguely sinister. Web artist Jake Tilson has created composite world maps with sections stored by computers in 25 different countries. The idea is to provide a step-by-step visualisation of possible Y2K failure: "watch as the terminator line crosses the globe" on 31 December and the little icons for each country (is that an umbrella for the UK?) disappear as the millennium bug hits. Elsewhere a page of ominous Y2K scenarios, and a list of survivalist essentials for the day after the Big Day. Part of Tilson's Oxford-based The

Cooker art site.

Icon Magazine

www.iconmagazine.com/

The front-page menu is jukebox-style; the setting is a diner, with someone's breakfast slowly disappearing from their plate. But this is Ivy League pop culture from Harvard, an online magazine that insists contributions use Web resources to refresh the art of storytelling. The manifesto is poetic and challenging - "Ever wondered what a sunset sounded like? Or what color a sonnet about racism should be?". Highlights include Cho Kako Ii, a Flash-powered essay about the Japanese cultural invasion, and a digitally evolving poem inspired by Pound and McLuhan - plus a "secret button" to permit a linear reading. "Departures, Losses, Separations" offers very personal visuals and text.