CYBERBRIDE

George L. Dillon: Writing With Images, University of Washington, 2002

Cyberbride (1998) is another classic Web work. It parodies "dating service" and international match-maker questionnaires, whether on line or in the personal ads, with their reduction of a "bride" to a sexual partner and a sexual partner to a set of attributes selectable from a "remote". As the page opens, we have only the remote, but as we make selections, thumbnails appear for each choice made. At the left, the screen capture includes the thumbnails for the choices eyes:black, place:bedroom, she likes: anal, she talks:nice, and she wears:body (partly cut off in screen capture; no choices for hair, tits, drives, or listens to a sample of the music chosen begins to play). The only problem is of course that the bride is not assembled into a single whole figure, but remains a scattered array of parts. But, so Spiller seems to be saying, is that not what we do when we make lists of attributes, whether our own or those of another person? The most we get is a sort of multimedia collage, not a picture of the cyberbride. Here the viewer is implicitly represented by the Remote and hence is cast in the role of consumer sitting before a Web-TV. 

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