Installation view at Georgetown Steam Plant, Seattle — drag to orbit

Click here…

Click Here… is an interactive installation that showcases an archive of early web banner ads in different languages curated from the Wayback Machine. Banner ads are a form of graphical advertisement prevalent on the web in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Widely regarded by early web users as a visual nuisance for their gaudy graphics and flashy animations, banner ads nevertheless played an important role in shaping the online experience for users worldwide.

Click Here… is composed of a period-appropriate CRT monitor, a computer mouse, and a wall projection. Visitors can click the mouse button to browse through banner ad frames centered on the iconic phrase “click here” (or its counterparts in different languages) on the monitor. Each time a new banner ad frame is loaded, the wall projection showcases the original web page where the banner ad originally appeared. By highlighting the most archetypical phrase in these ads and showcasing the original web pages, Click Here… is both a demonstration of the dot-com era commercial culture and a comparative study of the distinctive characteristics and commonalities of early web design patterns between web pages in different languages.

By offering a space to (re)experience the early web’s ethos and aesthetics, Click Here… invites visitors to reflect upon the trending nostalgia of the dot-com era through exploring the tension between romanticizing the past web and acknowledging its complex legacy in paving the way for the hyper-surveilled, ad-saturated Internet of today.

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