Author Unknown | Art By Anitza

Author Unknown 1994-ongoing

"Author Unknown" is an interactive multimedia artwork that has been a central part of my art practice for over thirty years, since I first conceived it as an undergraduate project in 1994.

"I could hardly have imagined its longevity and evolution".

At its core, "Author Unknown" explores a narrative following a woman's reflections on her life in relation to the technology that surrounds her. The work is influenced by technology on two distinct levels:

the narrative itself delves into the impact of technology on the female character's identity; and
t reflects the impact of technology on the creation of the digital work itself, particularly the tools I've used to author it.

I've always found that the choice of technology used to author the project has been dictated by what was available at the time. This constant adaptation to changing technological landscapes is a defining characteristic of "Author Unknown's evolution.

Author Unknown 1994 -2004

You can also access the video from YouTube here.

The video provides a walk through the 2004 version of the work (technically the 2007 version that was exhibited). Today, the interactive work I created in Flash can only be experienced as a video, since sharing it in its original interactive format is no longer possible—even with emulators.

Who inspired me

My early work was greatly inspired by three women.

Sherry Turkle - At the time I was very much interested in the work of Sherry Turkle, who would later go on to work extensively with robots in Japan. Her ideas on what she calls women's "non-linear" approach to the technology, the "soft mastery" and "bricolage" appealed to me. Her book Life on the Screen fueled my interest in philosophy, although at the time that I read it I was on a cattle farm on the northern rivers area of News South Wales and it would be almost nine years later that I would find myself walking up a Swiss mountain to have a class with Jean Baudrillard (see European Graduate School). One of my regrets is that I didn't think to follow her up when I was visiting MIT in 2018, as she lived alone near Boston.
Linda Dement with her confrontational images of gashes, which lead to a late night nude session of photocopying body parts.
Suzanne Treister - I consider Suzanne Treister's 1995 work, Time travelling with Rosalind Bronsky, to be one of the most brilliant interactive narratives produced. Her foresight in publishing a 124-page full-colour hardback book to house the CD-ROM was particularly insightful, as it allowed her work to survive the "inevitable obsolescence of the digital material," a challenge I continue to face.

The impact of technology

The choice of technology used to author the project has always been influenced by what is available at the time.

In 1994, that was Macromedia Director and Adobe Photoshop 2 and Premier. I found the software easy to use and picked-up the script 'lingo' readily. I generated human forms readily with Poser and tinkered with Bryce (but really didn't have a need for beautiful graphics of landscapes).
By 2004, Director was no longer being widely used and the software of choice was Flash. So I re-authored the project which meant I needed to learn the scripting language 'ActionScript'.
In 2014, Flash was falling out of favour with the industry. Browsers stopped supporting it. One by one, Chrome, Firefox, Safari — they all started blocking Flash content by default. Apple famously refused to support Flash on iPhones and iPads. And since mobile became the main way people used the web, Flash started to feel like a dead end. Then came the security issues. Flash had a reputation for being buggy and full of holes that hackers loved. Adobe was constantly patching it, but by then, the damage was done.
In 2024, the temptation to deconstruct the work using the technology of generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) has made me dust of the files and starting 'playing' again.

Digital Storytelling

The ways of telling a story in digital media differ significantly from traditional forms like books. Digital platforms open up new possibilities for navigating a story, allowing audiences to explore, interact, and shape their own experience rather than following a fixed, linear path. This shift transforms storytelling into a more dynamic and participatory process.

There are three key methods of navigating Author Unknown.

Temporal - the female protagonists life stages, from birth to launching her first website
Spatial - the metaphor of the rooms of the house she lives in
Conceptual - the different technologies that impact on her identify, such as a camera, a blender

1. Temporal (linear):

The story progresses in a sequential timeline of a woman’s life, from birth to the moment she created her first web page—an act of digital self-authorship.
There’s no explicit navigation element on the screen. Instead, the technology metaphors (camera, blender, button) subtly mirror the life stages.

2. Spatial:

The blueprint of a house is a key navigation device and metaphor. Each room represents a significant stage in the character’s life.
- Bedroom 1 (Birth): The character’s early years.
- Bedroom 2 (Teenage Years): A space where personal identity is forming.
- Kitchen (Domestic Adulthood): The kitchen is a typical domestic and traditional space for women. But the cyborg (within the character) is unhappy.
- Study (Discovery of the Internet): This room reflects the character's entry into the digital world "the internet", where she can begin to build her digital identity.

3. Technology Metaphor:

The navigation bar uses technology symbols that represent each life stage through metaphor:
- Camera (Baby/Young Child): The camera is symbolic of documentation and memory—how early moments are captured through the eyes of others—family, friends, and society. This represents the idea that the child’s identity is formed largely through external influences.
- Record player (Teenage): Music and media greatly influence her at this stage of life.
- Blender (Adult Domesticity): The blender symbolizes the multifaceted roles the individual takes on in adulthood and how the technologies associated with domesticity can impact on agency.
- Button (Discovery of the Internet): The computer ESC button symbolises the transition from external influences to the character’s growing agency and autonomy. This technology metaphor signifies a moment where the individual takes control and makes decisions that shape their adult life in a new, dynamic way.

The evolution from camera to blender to button signifies increasing agency and personal involvement with technology. In earlier stages, the character is largely shaped by external forces (camera = documentation by others). As the character grows and enters adulthood, they blend roles (blender = complex life navigation), and finally, in adulthood, they have the potential to interact with technology on their own terms (button = active discovery and control over their online identity).

Exhibition

In 2007, I presented Author Unknown at "Rooms of Their Own/Des espaces bien à elles - Women and the Knowledge Economy conference" hosted by Royal Society of Canada - The Academies of Arts, Sciences and Humanities of Canada.
Extract from the conference program:
"In 1929 Virginia Woolf predicted that women in "another century or so," if given the opportunity and rooms of their own, will have "the habit of freedom and the courage to write exactly what we think" and see "human beings in relation to reality." Such opportunities are now more tangible for some, more elusive for others. Rooms of Their Own addresses the features of local and global cultures that encourage and impede women's active, creative, and critical participation in the knowledge economy and society. It considers the situation of women within and beyond the academy to heighten awareness, extend knowledge, and form practical recommendations.": Link

2014

The human

In 2014, I had a profound realisation that my own life had mirrored art, as I had "unknowingly fallen into the same trap of domesticity as the woman in Author Unknown. At that time, I intended to explore how the character would navigate social media, recognising how much "humanity was externalising its self-perception, seeing itself through digital reflections rather than through internal understanding. ".

With the birth of my second child—now 20 years after Author Unknown V1—I set an intention to explore how the character would navigate social media, a force that had reshaped the world and the ways people connect (or disconnect).

However, I felt completely overwhelmed, and the work did not progress.

The technology

Flash reached its End of Life on 31 December 2020. I explored HTML5 and decided that its interactivity was significantly reduced compared to Flash. In fact, I feel that no tool has truly replaced the level of rich media and interactivity that Flash had provided.

When Flash disappeared, I noticed there were fewer tools to actually tell a story — not just display media, but really shape a narrative. Everything became more disjointed. Video went to YouTube. Short text and images got pushed onto social media. 3D? That’s Blender or Unity territory. But there wasn’t one place to bring it all together anymore.

HTML5 was supposed to be the answer, but it’s more like a loose framework than a proper tool. It lets you build something unified, sure — but only if you have the time, skills, and patience to stitch it all together from scratch. For creators like me, it felt like the creative focus had shifted from making something expressive to managing platforms and formats.

2024

The human

2024, the narrative has evolved further to capture the character's story in a world I describe as "disaggregated, disconnected, and data rich," reflecting on life through the lens of both social media and AI

It was a perfect storm—an urge to return to art practice, a desire to resurrect Author Unknown, and a period of deep reflection on how to capture the story of the character in a world that is disaggregated, disconnected, and data rich.

The technology

The character in Author Unknown reflects on her life through the lens of both social media and AI and therefore a range of technology is used.

Authoring tools:

There is still no single authoring tool I would recommend. I lament the loss of Flash. For now, Author Unknown exists as an evolving set of disaggregated experimental assets, which may one day be re-authored—just as we, too, may.

Current tools include: AI (Dall_E, Runway), Virtual and Augmented Reality (VR and AR).

Digital Archiving