Artist Statement for Social Media Adaptation of Pride and Prejudice
The creation of our project involved a very large
detour. The idea was simple enough,
adapt Jane Austen’s classic, Pride and Prejudice to Facebook. The social network is the perfect venue for
such a relationship driven story. The
entire book focuses on social interaction, social status, and relationships,
which is what Facebook is all about.
Our method was ambitious; we would create real Facebook
accounts for the main characters and re-create the narrative following the
order of events from the book. We met
together in the computer lab and each opened up three or four different web browsers
on our respective computers. When we had
a list of all the most important events to cover, we began to create events,
add friends, and post comments and status updates. All of the characters were friends with Jane
Austen, and we were tracking the story via her home feed. We created the Netherfield ball event, invited
guests, accepted invitations, commented afterward, etc. Then the unthinkable happened. Facebook began to shut us down! Our accounts were logged out automatically
and we were unable to log back in. We
received messages that we were in violation of Facebook policy by having and
using multiple accounts. So our
elaborate and fun project suddenly got wiped out. Oh, internet!
Ironically, the only somewhat important thing we have ever
tried to do on Facebook is the only thing we ever were not permitted to do on
Facebook. The social network has managed
to hurt us academically not only by facilitating excessive time-wasting, but
now by figuratively “eating our homework!” We invested hours of time to create the
accounts (and accompanying email addresses), and actually perform the story
live, only to have it all taken away in an instant.
We resorted to plan “B”, which was the website ‘thewallmachine.com’,
to create a fake Facebook wall. This was
not the way we wanted to tell the story because it is much more flat and linear
than we wanted our presentation to be.
Real Facebook accounts would have provided layers of profiles to
explore. Anchored by Jane Austen’s home
feed, one click could link viewers to the other profiles, events, etc. As it is, our project is a nice re-telling,
but not the social media experience we had originally hoped for.
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