These are frames from a Flash presentation that I gave at Harvard University. I was invited to present my work and to deconstruct The Fair, which was a Flash Film Festival finalist and an official selection of the Sundance Film Festival. I HATE CMPTRS was a brief overview of the path leading to the creation of The Fair.

I don't particularly love computers. I never have, and I still don't. I sit in front of a computer nearly 10 hours nearly every day.

When I was a kid, everyone thought that computers were the future. I remember reading children's magazines that encouraged young readers to consider a job in the computing industry. I just wanted to ride my bike.

I took a computer class at camp one Summer when I was about ten years old. We wrote code to draw a picture on the screen. The image that my partner and I looked like this. It took about a week.

[Video still] This is one of my favorite books from my childhood. It's a Wonder Woman comic book with a readalong record. One of the most stirring scenes is a brawl between Wonder Woman and the leader of the Psi Women, a buxom blonde bombshell. There's lots of slapping and kneeling and moaning. I didn't know exactly why I liked it, I just know that I did.

The first time I had any interest in computers was when I saw an essay created in a word processing program and printed from a laser printer. I wanted to be a writer, and I was impressed by how "professional" it looked. I also thought it was neat that I could cut and paste text.

Still, I was more interested in listening to music and riding my bike. One of my favorite bands was The Nation of Ulysses, which had liner notes filled with rhetorical flourishes.

My very first Flash movie was a teaser to announce the launch of my website. It ended with a screed read by a robot voice.

The movie was a direct descendent of my influences.

As I continued to work with Flash and computers, I became more and more interested in the programming and interactive aspects. One of the early iterations of my websites contained nothing more than a series of interactive flash movies that contained sound and relied on programmatic movement in response to the user's actions.

After several years of working nearly exclusively with computers, I felt a real, physical need to work with physical objects. This is an altered Polaroid I made.

One of the most satisfying experieces in my life has been creating books. This is one of the first books that I created. The cover features a transfer of the image above. The interior pages are a collection of my writing, scans of objects, video stills, and frame grabs of some of my computer art.

[Video still] The book features a readalong mini-cd. Like my first Flash animation, this book is a direct descendent of my influences.

The presentation ends with the physical display of The Fair book and a viewing of The Fair movie.