NET ART PROJECT Each Month Fringe Exhibitions will feature a new net art project. Past projects can be accessed here This month (September 2008) we are pleased to present: When I Was President by Alan Bigelow "When I Was President" is a portrait of absolute power as depicted by a fictional President of the United States. This President is unnamed and non-historical, that is, he has never, and could never, exist, yet what he represents is archetypal in nature and endures within the optimism, dangers, and limitations of political power. The work is created in Flash and divided into nine sections, each of which addresses a different Presidential act of power, and its consequences. The acts of power are elemental and metaphoric--they are simultaneously absurd, idiosyncratic, and impossible, yet they seem to tell some basic truth about the promise of absolute power, and its inherent failures. "When I Was President" takes approximately four minutes to view. No special downloads or plugins are required. This work uses images, videos, and audio files acquired online, and modified by the artist. A credits page is included on the site. Alan Bigelow writes digital stories for the web. These stories are created in Flash and use images, text, audio, video, and other components. These stories are created for viewing on the web, although they can be (and have been) shown as gallery installations. His work, installations, and conversations concerning digital fiction have appeared in many venues both on and off-line. Currently, in addition to teaching full-time at Medaille College, he is a visiting online lecturer in Creative Writing and New Media at De Montfort University, UK You can see Alan Bigelow's work at http://www.webyarns.com.