Paper Rad

image and screenshots taken from paperrad.org and paperrad.org/newindex.html

I love Paper Rad's weird net collages, full of clip art and word art and odd artefacts - glitches, glitter graphics, screenshots, and graphics which have an air of the unusual and an internet museum-y feel with lots of geocities/old computer stuff. Digital collages can do so many things that physical ones can't and they have such a different feel. The Paper Rad websites remind me of this school project website too.

There is a nostalgia which tends to be inherent to net collages and net art in general, pointing towards the dinosaur feel of old technology in the face of the relative youth of computers and the internet. Things from the early 2000s seem so dated now, but are also very fondly remembered by those of us who grew up just as computers were starting to become household appliances.

I just love the sense of collection in stuff like this. It reminds me of collecting Beanie Babies and Pogs and magazines and stuff in the 90s - these "collection cultures" kinda add up and feed into collage webpages like this. I had my own website on freewebs in the mid 00s. It had a chatroom, guestbook, stupid collections of pictures and quotes from friends, a diary page (my first blog!). A kid's first venture into the online world is embarrassing but so fascinating.