my boyfriend came back from the war

My boyfriend came back from the war is a browser-based art using hypertext to combine the images and narrative together. The artist is Olia Lialina, a pioneer internet artist,

It is a story about a couple reconvene after the war, the girl and the boy talk about the marriage, betrayal, faithfulness and their wish. The text begins with a phrase; my boy friend came back from the war, after the dinner, they left alone’, when clicking on this short sentence, the screen is divided into two pictures, one with a window and one with the boy and the girl sitting on a bench, it symbolize the couple is far from being separated. The next click is divided into two frames, one merge the previous frames together, and one with the image of the boy.

My boyfriend came back from the war encourage users to participate with the artwork, they can determine the story order by their own path through clicking what window they want without any restriction. Besides, the readers have to construct the whole story by their own by the broken dialogues. For example, “Will you marry me”, “ Tomorrow”, “No, better than two months later”, the three broken dialogues are the metaphor about the date for wedding that the boy asks the girl.

It shares some features of Piet Mondrian’, Dada art as well as conceptual art. Piet Mondrian, a Dutch painter, was a great contributor to De, Stiji art movement. His arts mainly focus on lines, different from of square and rectangular as well as using  single color tones. My boyfriend came back from the war is similar to Piet Mondrian’s art. Lialina uses few lines to constitute the frames which make the brilliant contrast with the background. Also, the color of the images, comments and the dialogues between the couple are only black and white.

For Dada art, let’s give a brief summary of its style. Dada movement began in World War I, it has no predominant medium, nonsensical and it never follow any rules. Unlike traditional art, My boyfriend came back from the war

is one of the earliest arts using hypertext from internet. Each link connects with another to ensure reader can browse continuously. Also, it adopts HTML which can show several frames on the screen simultaneously and hide the next HTML document until it is opened. It enables readers can move forth or back without any restriction and manipulate the frame what they want by their own path. The artwork can also be stored on CD-Rom that allows to show it in any computer or even when offline.

For conceptual art, it focuses on idea over the form. My boyfriend came back from the war does not have a physical object but being presented on the Internet. In order to present her idea- the disconnection of the boy and the girl after the war,

Lialina uses the hyper narration that doesn’t present in the whole sentence but in the short phrase or in the broken dialogue to convey the atmosphere of the difficult conversation. For example, When the girl being questioned in her faithfulness, Lialina splits the dialogue into “ Last summer”, “ What should I explain”, “ You don’t’ trust me?”  to create the tensed atmosphere between the couple.