Welcome to Planet Desire
an interactive artwork for Crawlspace
First of all, welcome to all the new subscribers that joined Queer Computer in my 2-month absence. I don’t know why, but nothing gets me more subscribers quite like disappearing off the face of the Earth for an indefinite amount of time. Mi scusa, I was on holidays, now I’m back, ciao.
Just before I left for Europe, I had this work published for issue 3 of Crawlspace — a multimedia journal of interactive writing and art. I’ve really admired this publication since its launch last year and it was a pleasure to work with the editors, Rory Green and Hannah Jenkins, to bring ‘Planet Desire’ to life!
My original idea for this work spun out of my Overland article: ‘I am Malcolm’, where I relayed the queer history of the Minitel — a boxy computer used in 1980s France for internet services. When discussing technology, and even queerness, we often find ourselves trapped in a narrative of linear progression, but here we were, in 1982, arranging dick-sucking appointments through a text-only monochrome terminal hooked into the phone line, as if it’s 2012 on an app like Grindr. What we find in the ephemera of this moment, in the French Minitel, is the potential of a queer utopia.
However, in developing this new work, I quickly realised the impossibility of capturing a utopia — a concept that is inherently fluid and undeniably subjective. As the piece evolved, I instead embraced a more critical perspective: whose utopia was I attempting to depict? The final piece challenges the notion of neutrality on the internet — a space that simultaneously nurtures new forms of identity and expression while perpetuating exclusive representations of the ideal body and sexual desire. Planet Desire weaves together queer theory I’ve read, and the queer theory I haven’t read, moments of poetry, domesticity, queer histories, love letters, text messages, Grindr screenshots, and gay pornography, inviting viewers to explore the work and establish their own connections between the text and images.
For Queer Computer readers, I thought I’d take you on a journey through the many text references circulating Planet Desire.
Frank O’Hara poem
This is an excerpt from Frank O'Hara’s poem 'Having a Coke with You'. I originally came across it in the introduction to José Esteban Muñoz’ Cruising Utopia. Muñoz writes:
This poem tells us of a quotidian act, having a Coke with somebody, that signifies a vast lifeworld of queer relationality, an encrypted sociality, and a utopian potentiality.
The poem’s subject is O’Hara’s partner, Vincent Warren, a ballet dancer. Here’s a video of O’Hara reading it in 1966:
Christopher Strachey love letter algorithm
This is a quote from a love letter generator made by Christopher Strachey in 1952. Strachey was a closeted gay man and computer scientist in the 50s, who worked closely with Alan Turing. His love letter generator is considered one of the first forms of computer-generated literature, and an expression of queer love and longing.
It’s been remade by a few different artists and researchers over the years. I particularly like this one by video game designer, Matt Sephton.
DEAREST DUCK,
MY AVID FELLOW FEELING SIGHS FOR YOUR AMBITION. YOU ARE MY LOVESICK HEART, MY PRECIOUS APPETITE. MY SYMPATHY LOVES YOUR LOVE. YOU ARE MY AVID YEARNING.
YOURS FERVENTLY,
M.U.C.
I’m currently developing my own resources and workshop on creating this love letter generator for yourself. So, if you’re interested, let me know!
Governor Randy McNally being thirsty af
I actually covered this story back in March. It's about conservative figures getting caught online for being gay and thirsty. You should watch the video of Randy explaining himself and this wonderfully audacious comment to the news, it's pretty funny.
WW2 love letters
This is a reference to the roughly 600 love letters sent between Gilbert Bradley and Gordon Bowsher in the late 1930s to 1945.
The letters were found by a house clearing company after Bradley’s death in 2008. The company sold the letters to a dealer specialising in military material, who put them on eBay, which was subsequently bought by a museum curator. I hope this is also how all my nudes are rediscovered seventy years from now.
This particular letter was dated 12 February 1940, and the full quote reads:
My own darling boy,
There is nothing more than I desire in life but to have you with me constantly...
...I can see or I imagine I can see, what your mother and father's reaction would be... the rest of the world have no conception of what our love is - they do not know that it is love...
soc.motss post
soc.motss is an online discussion forum started in 1983. “Motss” is an acronym for “members of the same sex” — a particularly unsexy way of saying gay to avoid censorship by the USENET system. Through the 80s and 90s it was mostly used by academics and researchers, because who else had access to the internet.
I’ve read about an infamous “fuck chart” that was circulating around soc.motss members via email in the late 90s. Navigating through the forum archives can be pretty difficult, but from what I can tell, the fuck chart was incredibly elusive. If anyone knows its whereabouts, please let me know.
This quote is from 24th April 1990 — the poster asked the forum for advice on telling his friend, who is dying of AIDS, that he’ll miss him once he is gone, without coming across as cliche or morbid. Bob tells him to just say it as he did in the forum.
Trying something new out here … a few unrelated links!
NewsJacker 🌏🍪
This website claims to hijack the news of any climate sceptic with only a cookie recipe. How it works? You send your climate sceptic aunty a link to what looks like a normal website for baking cookies. However, this website updates their online-tracking cookies, and tricks the internet into thinking your unsuspecting aunt cares about climate change. So, the next time your poor Aunty Helen is scrolling through Facebook, all her ads are for Greenpeace.
I like the idea, but who the hell doesn’t know how to make a cookie? How could you even conceivable send a basic cookie recipe to anyone without looking incredibly suspect? This should clearly be a recipe for beef wellington.
The most promising thing about NFTs was that the original artist would be paid each time their artwork was sold, through royalty fees. Now that promise is long dead, with all the major NFT marketplaces waiving royalty fees. RIP NFTs — we hardly bought ye.
