When I was young I used to keep a stainless steel safe--the key stuck in the lock--full of objects that meant nothing to anyone but me. Interestingly, most of these objects were flat and circular: a penny stamped in a machine which had embossed the empire state building on it, a nickel my uncle and I left on the railroad tracks behind his house as a train passed by. "Here, keep it. If the train had been going slower, you could still see the face in it. Now it's more like a slug. You sure you want it? OK. OK." I had every penny from 1921 up, but none were anywhere near mint condition. Several two-dollar bills, the odd foreign coin, and those little plastic discs that you used to shoot out of those little plastic guns. This bronze commemorative coin of the magic kingdom, still in the case. OK, you get the idea.

I still have the safe. I'm 31. The coins are still in the same plastic grocery bag inside the safe that they were in when I was 5. I rarely take the safe out. I'm writing all this from memory, although the safe is no more than five feet away from me right now. I just know that the same stuff is in there that has always been in there, and it makes me feel good. I weed out all my other boxes of memorabilia every few years. But not the safe. I don't know why.

The best experimental websites are like that safe to me. My heart sank when Aurelia Harvey took down the original Entropy 8. My heart leapt when she put it back up, now buried and difficult to access, which makes it all the more wondrous. If I was a cussing man, I'd say "F*** written content." I've got text coming out of my nose. You're reading some of it right now. Precious to me is the site that presents me with lovingly handcrafted digital objects. The more seemingly tactile the better. They must be emotionally evocative. They must be self-contained. Such gems are to me the best the Web can offer. I bookmark such sites and visit them again and again, just to make sure they still exist, just to interface with them one more time. And one of my new favorites is Volume One.

Matt Owens, creator of Volume One has no Flash peer. Technically, he is flawless. For instance, most Flash designers leave you with a lame "downloading now" message until the entire piece is ready. The "downloads" at Volume One are often as inviting than the actual "loaded" pieces. Indeed, the downloads are part of each piece's chronological narrative.

What great fortune that the Web's best technical flash designer (besides Joshua Davis) is also its best flash artist. By artist, I don't just mean he has groovy design chops (although the twirling 3D letters are in full force). No, I mean Owens is making profound artistic statements left and right. He is one of the few people who seem to truly understand what the strengths of the Web are as an artistic medium. His work is always in motion, but it's not video. It's always interactive, but it's not software. It's just the right balance of chaos, user control, and artist control to charm and seduce. These are not immersive environments that surround. Volume One is like a grown man's box of emotive momentos, and we're invited to peer in and handle them.

The pieces at Volume One are more like sculptures than Web pages. No, they're more like little AI mechanical robots. No, they're more like some visual 3D firework spell that Gandalf might cast at a hobbit's birthday party, except they're interactive, and they incorporate text and audio. Yeah, that's it. Whatever. Matt Owens himself calls these pieces "narrative explorations." I call them "Flash objects," and nobody does them better than Owens.

Volume One comes out quarterly, and each issue's "objects" (there are 4 per issue) are based loosely on a seasonal theme. This summer's issue is about recreational vehicles, but of course it's about so much more. While you're clicking on the beautifully rendered 3D auto engine, causing the audio to roar deafeningly, and actually causing the browser window itself to vibrate, Owens is reaching you. "Do you feel the power?" he metaphorically asks. "It's fun to be in such control, isn't it? Maybe there's more to those dumb rednecks than you originally thought. Maybe they're just bold enough to express something that's bottled up in you too." Does Owens really mean to convey all that? You bet he does. The piece is entitled "Aesthetics of Power."

Volume One is first and foremost about memory, regardless of the season. A second piece in the summer 2000 issue is "about" a young competitive swimmer, achieving great things, but at what immeasurable cost to her youth? Replete with cryptic yet legible catch phrases that appear as you explore ("legitimately expedient," "unexpectedly resolute"), and accompanied by Owens' signature Fugazi-esqe alternative audio instrumental loops, the piece is ambitiously entitled "Achilles | Young Achiever." A theme that might have been banal in an essay, or sappy in a film documentary, comes across as sad, cautionary, and a bit unsettling in this strange Flash medium. It is Owens' ability to find the profound in the mundane (Japanese toys, a 4-wheeler, a teen swimmer) that elevates his work beyond merely slick and right on up to cathartic.

Each piece is an almost tangible objectification of some remembered emotion. Pre-adulterated ecstasy, hope, sadness, loss, and the premonition of loss -- all are recurring themes. Owens even recaptures the self-competitive experience of playing 80's hand-held sports games (visit the site for a guaranteed flashback). It took Terrence Malick three hours of Thin Red Line to get us to "all things shining." Owens gets us there in three minutes (or faster, depending on the speed of your Internet connection). Owens' stunning narrative deftness arises from his right understanding of the Web as media -- the Web excels not at presenting something sweeping and grand (a novel, a movie), but at presenting something brief yet intense. And isn't that what a memory is, something brief yet intense?

Snapshots are supposed to bring back memories of the events they chronicle. But have you ever looked at a stranger's snapshots? Without the stranger's memories, the pictures are meaningless to you--just images of people you don't know doing things you don't remember. What if there was a way to hard code snapshots with the emotions and memories that they convey to those who cherish them? What if just by looking at someone else's snapshots, you were immediately able to feel what they felt? Matt Owens has made a way.

Encapsulated memories for your emotional pleasure, free at volumeone.com. Perhaps you'll even stumble across a memory of your own. Not improbable. Realities often intersect. Just don't forget to put 'em back in the safe when you're done.

Curt Cloninger concocts at lab404. If you accidentally get some on you, that's OK.

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