Individual Work
“HistoryOf.Golf”

"HistoryOf.Golf" By Jonah King is a work of video images and text, created as a website and available in a web browser. This work of electronic ligature examines the history of golf and how it became a sport. Users can easily find this work by searching the title "HistoryOf.Golf" in your internet browser. When you open the website, an automatic YouTube video is playing on the header. This video is on a continuous loop and has the option for sound. This video shows two men playing golf in the desert, not speaking with images and video clips. The sounds in the video are calming as you only hear the wind and the sound of the ball being hit. The aesthetic of the video is pleasing. The colours and sounds used in the video are not overpowering. Below is a button you can press to hear golfers exchange a series of unfunny jokes. The website is very operable. As you scroll down, there is a descending timeline of the history of golf. The video stays visible at the top of the screen as you scroll down, playing unless stopped by the user. The dates and essential details are in bold lettering, along with some images on the timeline. This website is easy to use as it only consists of scrolling down. The pictures and videos displayed adds to the experience of the text. It allows you to visualize what things looked like within that timeframe. The website flows easily, and all text is visible with a white background and black text.
Jonah king provides a timeline with golf history starting at 75-45m BCE until 2020. Here are some of the main points King has provided. He states the creation of golf started in 75-45m BCE when the tectonic plate shifts splitting Pangaea into a landmass that formed North and South America, Eurasia and Africa, and the Atlantic Ocean. The shifting of the plates caused high plateaus in North America and under Northern Canada. In 70000 - 11000 BCE, a glacial erosion created the Rocky Mountains, which created the Mojave and Nevada deserts. In 23000 BCE, human existence was reported in the American continent. IN 550 BCE Chaugán was invented. This is a game where a ball needs to be hit in the least number of strokes, similar to golf. In 1457 golf was created, and the first game was reported in Scotland. In 1638 the book "Théorie et traité de jardinage" is published. This book became very popular and significant to formal French gardens. Having a formal garden was a way to display your social status and wealth. This book influenced the design of golf courses for many years. In 1640 the English word "club" was used. Which stems from "clubhouse ."In 1650 the first game of golf was recorded in American by settlers. The game became so popular in 1659 New York released a statement to stop residents from playing golf in the streets due to multiple cases of broken windows. In 1744 the first golf rulebook was published. In 1770 the first African golf course was reported to be built. After the declaration of independence in 1786, the first golf club apart from the United Kingdom was created; The South Carolina Golf Club. In 1929 the PGA (professional golfers association of America) was formed. In 1946 Bill Powell was denied to play at a public course because of the colour of his skin, which led to him building Clearview Golf Club in Ohio. Bill Powell is now the first African American to own a professional golf course. The administrator of the PGA, Clifford Roberts, says, "As long as I'm alive, golfers will be white, and caddies will be black." Being a non-inclusive association in 1977, the PGA admits female golfers for the first time in their tournaments. Becoming more progressive, the PGA announced in 1990 that they would not host tournaments on their tour at clubs that are non-inclusive based on race, religion, sex or national origin. This led to many clubs drooping from the PGA tour. Tiger woods, an African American golfer, wins the title of foremost world champion. Due to the climate crisis in 2020, the state of California loses four million three hundred fifty-nine thousand five hundred seventeen acres of land, destroying many homes, businesses, and golf courses. The last reported timeline to golf history is in 2020 when Donald Trump finds out he has been beaten for the presidency by Joe Biden at the Trump National Golf Course in Virginia. While Trump was president, he spent an estimated $140,000,000 of taxpayer money on golf. I have reviewed the timeline King has provided, and all the dates are correct. The timeline is tractable.
more information at the golf experience and at what is the history of Golf?

I enjoyed King's electronic ligature. There was a lot of information it took me multiple times to read and understand the history of golf and what was Significant. Filtering out what I thought was significant helped me understand the history of golf. The visual experience is pleasurable and helps the readers visualize what golf consisted of when first created in the Mojave Desert. The video interestingly expresses climate change issues. The silence in the video shows the cultural divide consistent with golf. It is opposed to the audio clip of the men exchanging unfunny jokes. Golf is stereotyped as a sport for wealthy, older, Caucasian men, which shows the social implications it can have. I enjoyed this piece because it is a lot deeper than the history of golf. This electronic literature shows climate change, political issues, and social issues. Available on the website is the option to buy a hat with the slogan "Make desert forest again" to mimic Trump's slogan "Green the desert ."The proceeds made from the hat are claimed to be donated to Mojave Desert Land Trust and Native American Rights Fund. The piece also sheds light on Trump spending taxpayers' money on golf.
"HistoryOf.Golf" By Jonah King connects to Liu & "The End of the end of book ."From Liu's standpoint, he fears that Digital humanities are destroying English departments. I believe this is a scoped perspective. He sees what is produced by King in this example. However, he doesn't see what was done to create this electronic ligature. "HistoryOf.Golf" couldn't exist without the use of books. The history of golf is accessible to us today because of books previously and currently. This work shows the value of books and how they contribute to today's knowledge. The electronic literature, in this sense, is taking the knowledge we have from books and making it more accessible.

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Author statement: 
HistoryOf.Golf is a web project containing video, sound and text. To create the video element, Jonah King collaborated with California residents Joseph Miller and Richard Milanesi, two self-proclaimed avid golfers and Donald Trump supporters. King invited Miller and Milanesi to play a game of golf across the expansive western Mojave desert, which King documented. The documentation from the collaboration ultimately became this three-channel video. How the West Was Won shares the title of the 1962 ultra-widescreen American western film, which opens with this narration: “This land has a name today and is marked on maps. But the names and the marks and the land all had to be won. Won from nature and from primitive man”. This film and unnerving quote about westward expansion contextualizes the entire project— King’s ultra-wide video directly references the format of the original film, but in the place of gallant cowboys trailblazing western trails there are two older white men, in casual sports attire, playing an eternal round of golf in the middle of the Mojave Desert—a foreboding foreshadow of the consequences of climate change. Like two ghosts, the golfers seem to be forever destined to haunt the barren landscape, not with rattling chains, but with swinging golf clubs. An audio button triggers a sound recording of the two men simply exchange dad jokes to one another. This piece is an intimate view of the two golfers who do not speak throughout the video. Once again King uses humor to probe at something more substantial. After a chuckle at a few jokes, the artist challenges the viewer to consider the essence of the jokes—what are the jokes about? Who is dominated in the jokes? From what social class are the jokes told from? and so on. The seemingly innocent telling of jokes can reveal cultural divides that King connects back to the game of golf. Scroll down to view an epic timeline that contextualizes climate change, westward expansion, colonialism, politics, and even the creation of the artist’s own artwork through the chronology of golf. Though in chronological order, the events King features in the timeline oscillate among a variety of geological and cultural proportions. Starting from the shifting of ancient tectonic plates in 200 million BCE and ending at 2020 when Donald Trump learns of his presidential loss to Joe Biden while golfing in Virginia, King highlights everything from the invention of golf, Christopher Columbus, the movement of Native Americans throughout the west, the Declaration of Independence to the American Civil War, the production of the original film How the West Was Won, the birth and meeting of the golfers that are featured in the artist’s film sharing the same title, Tiger Woods, and the most recent California wildfires. The History of Golf is a poignant statement about the brevity of human existence and domination veiled by the artist’s cunning use of humor and coincidence. Also inside HistoryOf.Golf is an option to purchase a wearable artwork – M.D.F.A. Hat. The slogan “MAKE DESERT FOREST AGAIN”, on dark green fabric, subverts the infamous Trump slogan to campaign to “green the desert”, a geoengineering solution to climate collapse. All profits are donated to Mojave Desert Land Trust and Native American Rights Fund.
Read the original work online here.