Info

Artist

James B. Pollack

Digital Artist & Writer

Art, Poetry & Virtual Environments

BA English Literature, Yale University. MFA Digital Arts & New Media, UC Santa Cruz.
UC Regents Fellowship in Digital Arts and New Media (2010).
Exhibited at Catharine Clark Gallery, Brown University, Electronic Literature Organization, the Ars Museum, and MOCA Virtual Museum.

The New Yorker ELMCIP

About Flash (2005–2012)

Adobe Flash was the dominant platform for interactive web content from the late 1990s through the early 2010s. At its peak, Flash was installed on over 98% of internet-connected desktops. It enabled a generation of artists, animators, and developers to create rich, interactive experiences that were impossible with the HTML of the era — layered vector graphics, embedded audio and video, mouse-driven depth navigation, and real-time animation, all running in the browser.

These works were created during Flash's golden age for digital art (2009–2012). Artists used ActionScript — Flash's programming language — to build immersive, interactive pieces with parallax depth, morphing vector shapes, and layered multimedia. The platform was especially important for electronic literature and net art communities, where it offered creative freedom that no other web technology could match.

Adobe officially ended Flash Player support on December 31, 2020. Browsers removed Flash entirely in 2021, putting millions of creative works at risk of disappearing from the web.

How It Works Now

This gallery uses Ruffle, an open-source Flash Player emulator written in Rust and compiled to WebAssembly. Ruffle runs entirely in your browser — no plugins, no installs, no security risks. It reimplements the Flash runtime from scratch, interpreting the original SWF files and rendering them using modern browser APIs (WebGL/WebGPU).

When you select a work, the original SWF file is loaded directly into Ruffle. Every vector shape, every animation frame, every mouse interaction is processed just as it would have been in 2009 — but now running on modern hardware through WebAssembly instead of the deprecated Flash plugin. Some works contain complex morph shapes and heavy ActionScript that push even modern emulation to its limits.

The gallery adds modern input methods on top: scroll-wheel zoom, keyboard navigation, touch and pinch gestures, and gamepad support. The original mouse-driven interaction is preserved and available via the "Original UX" toggle.

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Flash: Interactive Works by James B. Pollack (2009–2012)

An online gallery of 17 interactive Flash artworks by digital artist and writer James B. Pollack, preserved and playable in any modern browser via the Ruffle WebAssembly Flash emulator. These works span digital art, electronic literature, interactive installations, and net art, created between 2009 and 2012.

About the Artist

James B. Pollack is a digital artist and writer. He holds a BA in English Literature from Yale University and an MFA in Digital Arts and New Media from the University of California, Santa Cruz. He received the UC Regents Fellowship in Digital Arts and New Media in 2010. His work has been exhibited at Catharine Clark Gallery (San Francisco), Brown University, the Electronic Literature Organization, the Ars Museum, and the MOCA Virtual Museum.

Featured Works

SPHIROS (2009)

Sphiros presents the fictional tale of what happens when a timequake creates a world that really is open source. Built on the WithinSpace interface created by net artist Jason Nelson for the Adobe Flash platform. Exhibited at the Electronic Literature Organization 2010: Archive and Innovate. The gallery installation version used low-cost infrared head-tracking with Nintendo WiiMote. Cataloged in the ELMCIP Electronic Literature Knowledge Base.

Mush (2010)

Interactive Flash piece remixing the Guardian's writing rules into a transformative digital artwork. Featured in The New Yorker in the article "Mush triumphant" by Macy Halford, who wrote: "I thought I'd never see the day when a blog post inspired a work of art."

Harp Aeolian (2011)

Interactive web-based installation created for the Media Room at Catharine Clark Gallery, San Francisco. Pollack takes the viewer on a multimedia mythical journey through a virtual space inspired by Al Farrow's reliquary sculptures, blending art, poetry, and virtual environments. Curated by Lily Alexander.

Digital Diving (2009)

Interactive Flash artwork featuring Z-depth parallax navigation through layered digital compositions. Users navigate through stacked visual layers using mouse movement for panning and vertical dragging for depth exploration.

Complete Works List

Stereoscope v2 (2009) — 43.6 MB
Digital Diving (2009) — 50.7 MB
Brain Stuff 5 (2009) — 37 KB
A Hot Number (2009) — 8.5 MB
SPHIROS Final (2009) — 16.6 MB — ELO 2010, ELMCIP
Of Paradise Scene 2 (2010) — 8.0 MB
Of Paradise Scene 5 Final (2010) — 5.6 MB
Of Paradise Scene 7 (2010) — 2.9 MB
Mush (2010) — Featured in The New Yorker
Mind the Art (2010) — 2.0 MB
Cypresses (2010) — 861 KB
Digital Postcards: Inside Sterling (2010) — 3.4 MB
Digital Postcards: Vanderbilt (2010) — 7.3 MB
Digital Postcards: Yale Crew (2010) — 3.5 MB
Harp Aeolian (2011) — 6.4 MB — Catharine Clark Gallery
To the Victims of Religion (2011) — 410 KB
The Melancholy Devil 2 — 17.6 MB

Press and Exhibitions

The New Yorker — "Mush triumphant" by Macy Halford
ELMCIP Electronic Literature Knowledge Base — Sphiros
Electronic Literature Organization 2010: Archive and Innovate
Catharine Clark Gallery, San Francisco — Sandow Birk, Al Farrow, James Pollack
Brown University
Ars Museum
MOCA Virtual Museum

Technology

All works were originally created in Adobe Flash with ActionScript. They are preserved and made playable in modern browsers using the Ruffle Flash emulator, a Rust-based WebAssembly implementation. The gallery supports multiple input methods: mouse, keyboard (arrow keys for panning, +/- for zoom), scroll wheel, touch gestures (pan and pinch-to-zoom), and gamepad controllers.