The mainstream is catching up with what net artists have always known, that early net aesthetics are great and beautiful. Windows 93 is a perfect example. It blends a nostalgic Windows 95-style interface with a bunch of glitchy little programs all in your browser. And unlike some Windows, this one has a Start button!
Among the various fun little abstract applications that riff on the disk defragmenter, solitaire and a virus scanner, here are our five favorite apps. Make sure to double-click them:
Piskel is a fully functional pixel editor/mini-Photoshop. It’s actually helpful if you want to do little 8-bit graphics, so it gets top marks.
This is ASCII Star Wars. For all we know, it might be the whole movie.
Shout out to old viruses that just won’t give up. Back when viruses had guts they just sat there messing with you.
This is the closest one to a straight art piece. Let it run for a bit and there’s lots of beautiful gameboy-cam glitch-pics.
Windows 93 peeps know their roots and give a nod to original net artist Olia Lialina’s My Boyfriend Came Back From The War. A stone-cold classic.
