from the place
to Flagrant World






From the place to Flagrant World



Joseph Squier’s trajectory as an artist is marked by a persistent exploration of how emerging technologies can serve poetic, narrative, and experiential ends. His early web-based projectt the place (1994) and his later generative multimedia work Flagrant World (2017) represent two key milestones in a creative practice that spans decades and disciplines. While distinct in format and era, the two works are united by their experimental spirit, their lyrical treatment of memory and identity, and their deep commitment to the aesthetics of fragmentation, recombination, and viewer participation.



the place emerged during the nascent period of the internet, when most websites were informational or institutional in nature. Squier’s vision for the web was altogether different: he saw it as a space of possibility, where the nonlinear architecture of hyperlinks could mirror the workings of memory and consciousness. In the place, users navigated a series of interconnected poetic and visual fragments, moving through the piece in an intuitive, self-directed fashion. It was not a story in the conventional sense, but rather an open system — a mosaic of moments, impressions, and voices.



This embrace of nonlinear, user-directed narrative would become a throughline in Squier’s later work. 

Flagrant World, a much more expansive and technologically evolved project, carries forward many of the conceptual concerns of the place while pushing them into new territories of scale, complexity, and immersion. It is a generative, database-driven artwork that incorporates poetry, painterly images, sound, and performance. Like the place, it eschews traditional narrative structure in favor of dynamic recombination; no two experiences of the work are the same.



Where the place used the emerging structure of the web to suggest a fragmented, subjective experience of reality, Flagrant World expands that vision by incorporating additional modes of sensory engagement. 

Sound, for instance, plays a central role in Flagrant World, adding an aural dimension that makes the experience even more immersive and affective. Likewise, the work’s use of painterly imagery and performance elements reflects Squier’s continued investment in hybrid forms — a hallmark of his career.



At a thematic level, both works are deeply concerned with questions of identity, perception, and temporality. the place was a meditation on the psychic landscapes of both internal and urban environments, rendered in stark imagery and minimalist poetic text. It invited the user to wander, to encounter, to reflect. Flagrant World amplifies these concerns in a more abstract and expansive register. Here, the landscape is not only urban or physical, but emotional, existential, and even planetary. The title itself — Flagrant World — suggests a world on fire, a world that insists on being seen, that burns with meaning, disorder, and spectacle.



In both projects, the role of the viewer is central. Squier does not tell the viewer what to think or feel; instead, he creates environments that provoke thought and feeling through open-ended engagement. The viewer becomes a co-creator, assembling meaning through movement, intuition, and time. This participatory ethic aligns with Squier’s pedagogical values as well: as a professor, he long championed interdisciplinary learning and creative exploration, encouraging students to think beyond medium and genre.



Another key point of continuity is Squier’s approach to technology. Neither the place nor Flagrant World fetishize tech for its own sake. Instead, technology is used as a means of deepening experience, of facilitating new forms of attention. In the place, Squier used early web tools to build a contemplative environment at a time when the web was often characterized by speed and novelty. In Flagrant World, he used generative systems not to dazzle but to disrupt the viewer’s expectations, to introduce slowness and variation into the act of reading and viewing.



Yet there are also important differences between the two works, particularly in terms of scale and materiality. the place was created during a time of low bandwidth and limited graphic capability. Its design was necessarily minimalist, relying on subtlety and restraint. Flagrant World, by contrast, was conceived in an era of abundant computing power and multimedia potential. It takes full advantage of contemporary tools, offering a richer palette of expression.



Despite these differences, both works maintain a certain restraint, a poetic economy that favors nuance over spectacle. Squier’s sensibility is not maximalist; even in the more complex Flagrant World, there is a quietness, a space for breath. This is part of what makes his work so distinctive in the realm of digital art: it resists the tendency toward overstimulation and instead cultivates a kind of contemplative density.



In reflecting on the relationship between the place and Flagrant World, one might also consider how each work addresses the notion of time. the place unfolds in browser time, dependent on the user’s clicks and pauses. It is a work concerned with navigation. Flagrant World, meanwhile, is durational and procedural; it assembles itself, unfolding like a living system. In this sense, Flagrant World moves even closer to the logic of consciousness and memory, where meaning is not sequential but emergent.



Ultimately, the relationship between these two works is not linear but rhizomatic. the place is not merely a precursor to Flagrant World; it is a root system from which new forms have grown. Both works are part of a larger investigation into how we make meaning in a world increasingly mediated by screens, networks, and code. Both offer alternative visions of what digital space can be: not just a marketplace or a data stream, but a site for poetic inquiry, emotional resonance, and radical imagination.



In the end, what binds the place and Flagrant World most profoundly is their commitment to art as a space of pure potential. They are invitations, not prescriptions; environments, not messages. And in a time when digital experiences are so often equated with consumption, Squier’s work remains a powerful reminder of what art can be at its best: intimate, expansive, and urgently human.