about red mona

Christy Sheffield Sanford’s “Red Mona” is a work of net art that unfolds over the course of 45 “flash-cards” containing text, images, and sound. Based on Guy de Maupassant’s story, “Petit Soldat”, it was exhibited in 1997 at the “Maid in Cyberspace XX” exhibition held in Montréal. Because “Red Mona” was created with coding practices of the period, the work became inaccessible when Java Applets were no longer supported by browsers. This new version, Version 2.0, has been built by members of the Electronic Literature Lab (ELL) in Semantic Markup enhanced by ARIA so that it is accessible to people using assistive technologies so that they can access the main text featured on the cards and in the sound files via alt tags. It is important to note, however, that the collage style Sanford uses in her design incorporates words and images as graphical elements that cannot be represented for audiences.

“Red Mona” is but one of Sanford’s many works of electronic literature. Considered a pioneer in the field, Sanford has the distinction of being the first trAce Virtual Writer-in-Residence. Winner of many awards including The Well’s prize for the Best Hyperlinked Work on the Web for her work “NoPink,” Sanford has been won many grants including a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and two NEA-Rockefeller sponsored grants for New Forms. Many of her works can also be found at The NEXT.