iOS 6.0+

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In 1998 Ann Hirsch was twelve years old, and she frequented an AOL chat room called Twelve. As she got to know the regulars, she got to know the way they chatted, the words they used, the usernames they picked, the kinds of relationships they made. She observed and adapted and figured out how to get people to like her—something that she wasn’t able to do at her school. The remote community of the chat room lived by its own set of rules, like any social group, and policing was loose, limited to the snitcher’s arbitrary application of AOL’s Terms of Service. Under these conditions Ann developed a long-distance romance with a frequent user of Twelve who was more than twice her age.

Twelve is an app that tells a story. Performance artist Ann Hirsch worked in collaboration with app designer James La Marre to exploit the interactive narrative potential of today’s technology by emulating AOL’s interface of the late nineties. It creates an immersive experience while keeping the reader outside the story; you feel the disorienting effect of entering a chat room full of strangers in the middle of a conversation, then gradually come to recognize their handles and follow their relationships. But the only perspective is the one peering over Ann’s shoulder; it grants access to a private world, but with limits.

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Reviews of Twelve:


Compelling, haunting, and instantly familiar. A completely contemporary and inspiring work that falls somewhere in between visual art, a novel, a play, and a performance piece. Ann has captured the weight of being a young woman with ultra realism; this is a world of needing to type out songs lyrics, of idle sexuality, with the slow awareness of male violence. A work that feels nostalgic, current and futuristic all at once.

Rachel Rabbit White, writer/journalist


Twelve poses the question: what counts as performance? (What are the consequences of how we answer that question, and who feels them?) From old, familiar things—the AOL chat, the aesthetics of adolescence—Hirsch creates something new, dispensing with commonplaces about technology and sexuality and asking what we actually mean when we say someone's "faking it."

Since we're always really faking it—really there, really us, the whole time, using up some portion of our real and only lives. If we didn't, who would? It's not like there's some other, better part of us who sits around filing her nails, waiting for the act to end. Somebody has to do everything that's done. Ann Hirsch knows what we're doing.

Elizabeth Gumport, writer and senior editor of n+1


In Twelve, Ann Hirsch guides us back to a time of adolescence through the screens of IMs and group chatrooms. Hirsch reminds us of a time where, as a young girl, we're on verge of 'becoming a woman' though we're not exactly sure what that means. In Twelve it means defining yourself by the boys and men that like you. It means the first time you *kiss*ed someone you had never met and never will meet. It means the first time you had to learn how to fake an orgasm. Through selected AOL messages Hirsch explores young female relationships, as they revolve around men, and the constant driving force of being wanted.

Gabby Bess, author of Alone With Other People


Ann gives the reader a direct and vulnerable view into the mind of an adolescent girl online during a specific, historical moment. Her text is both revealing of the languages and codes developed online collectively, as well as how oddly transparent a virtual identity can be.

Jill Magid, artist and writer

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"Twelve" was commissioned as part of Klaus_eBooks, a series of artists' projects edited by Brian Droitcour and published by Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery. For more info, visit: http://klausgallery.net/ebooks