Final Interactive Art 1 Project: Choose your Trip... Fear and Loathing

For this final project, I choose option two from our original handout. I used photoshop and dreamweaver in order to produce a work of interactive art that portrayed my interpretation of Hunter S. Thompson's book and movie, "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas". I incorporated original digital artwork with quotes from the movie and book,to create over twenty-five individual web pages that are all connected using hypertext and links. Users can journey through the story by finding and clicking the links, that will take them to another related page. This project is meant to give a feel of the "drug induced" inspiration that Hunter S. Thompson wrote about, while also using hypertext to give each viewer a chance to create their own trip each time they visit and experiance the site.

Click here to view Corey Richardson's "Choose your Trip"

**Due to production limitations, this artwork is best viewed with Firefox, using a macintosh computer in the UWF Interactive art lab, with the browser window fitted to the size of the image on the first page.**

Seeing Privates: Rhizome.org Exhibition

http://rhizome.org/art/member-curated/exhibit.rhiz?601

GIS

Now that I have done some researching on my own on the topic of GIS Technology, I wish I would have been able to attend the lecture on the subject, because it is quite challenging to understand. As I understand it, GIS is a system that combines data such as road centerlines, property and district boundaries, addresses, building heights and footprints, and more, with geographic reference points, satelite, and ariel photos in order to create "reference maps" for people such as city planners and utility workers. This database is used to create maps that can also be sold to the public. For an artist, this information could be very useful, for the right reasons. The fact that different boundries would be clearly marked out could be incorparated into a site specific work. I've learned that there are still people who practice Cartography, the art of mapmaking, and GIS is a key tool that they use to create acurate fine maps.

Site-Specific Art

Traditionally, Site-specific art is created with the final site in mind and that site or location is incorparated into the design and creation of the artwork. The artwork is created to be displayed in a certain location and might not be as effective in a different location. With Sculptures, the surrounding landscape is often taken into account and plays a roll with the sculpture. There are many artists who build site-specific work and three that come to mind with certain projects include:

Christo-Surrounded Islands :
All of Christo's wrappings are done in a specific area or a specific building and each piece relies on what is wrapped, therefore it is extremely site-specific.

Robert Smithson- Spiral Jetty:

I imediatley thought of this piece when I searched for site-specific work. It was planned for this site and that is exactly where it went.

Andy Goldsworthy- The Neuberger Cairn:

The surrounding landscape was obviously taken into account in the design of the artwork and it goes well with the piece at this site, where it is permanently installed.


As far as a Computer screen or Browser window being the location for a Site-Specific artwork there are two possibilities. 1. take a play on words and the specific website that the artwork is located on is that site that it was specifically built for or 2. A computer screen could be installed in a location or gallery and the artwork displayed on it can only be displayed through that screen. There are several works on RHizome.org that play with these ideas.

http://universalacid.net/ is an artwork located only on that specific-site.

Creative Commons

The Creative Commons Licensing idea seems much more suited for today's world, versus the traditional Copyright. In today's world of file sharing, online videos, and online photo albums, sharing and callaboration goes along with it all and the Creative Commons Website and program gives a way for people to share their works and allow others to use it, but they also have some control over how others can legally use their works. There are six different licenses available for commoners to be able to regulate how their works are used by others as long as they give credit to the original creator. The uses for Creative Commons Licenses are endless, from the arts, to science, to music, and many other fields.

http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/7711
StrayForm utilizes Creative Commons for digital artists and since so much is free over the web, StrayForm helps fund the Creation of works and distribution happens naturally. They are planning to expand into scientific and academic fields in the future.

http://creativecommons.org/text/librivox
Librivox is a project that is creating a free domain library of audio books that are read by volunteers. Librivox's mission is the “acoustical liberation of books in the public domain.”

Process Report: Image Map Project

For my project located at http://students.uwf.edu/ctr3/imap/index.html
I used image mapping to create a cyclical website of interlinked images, where you could click on a certain part of each image and a new image would open up. In this project, Image Mapping uses the pixel coordinates to insert links on a specific photo on a certain part of that photo, that will link to another image on another page.
To do an Image Map, a photo must be opened in Photoshop and one of the first things you should do is go under the photoshop tab and in preferences, select units and rulers and be sure that the measurements are set to Pixels. The next step is to make sure that the info window is open because that is where your x,y, coordinates are given. Once you have this set up, you are ready to take coordinates and start image mapping. Image maps can be shaped as circles, rectangles, and polygons and there are different coordinates that need to be recorded for each shape. For further information and ideas on image mapping visit:

http://graphicdesign.spokanefalls.edu/tutorials/tech/imagemapexample/imagemap.htm
or
http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_map.asp

The image maps are made in a TextEdit document and saved as a html file that can then be uploaded to the web, along with the images that are mapped. Once all the files are uploaded, the interlinked website will hopefully work.

The medium is the massage

Marshall McLuhan's works and writings on communication and media brought about a new way of thinking about such subjects. It is said that "During his lifetime McLuhan did more than any other individual to interest the general public in communication study". Sparking interest in how people thought about the media and communication techniques made McLuhan a popular Media Theorist and writer. The fact that he thought electronic media would bring the world together as a "global village", prior to the World Wide Web even being invented, is quite astounding.
Reading the "medium is the massage" and listening to the recording were two completley different experiances and the differences back up what McLuhan was talking about. When I was reading it it was hard to stay focused, but when I listened to the recording, I found myself turning up the volume so that I wouldn't miss anything. In today's world, Communication is at a point that is quite new and exiting. With the internet, information and text is globally accessiable and boundries are collapsing. Digital media of today can be delivered in so many new and unique ways and regular printed text can almost be completley overridden by the digital age.

Analog and Digital Media differ greatly, but in the end both produce a wave that plays as a sound, however, Digital is much more complicated than Analog. Analog recordings take an analog wave from a microphone and put an analog wave directly on a tape and when that wave is read and amplified, a sound is produced. In digital media, the analog wave is sampled at an interval and those samples are turned into numbers that are stored digitally. TO produce a sound from digital media, the samples or numbers are turned into a voltage wave that approximates the original analog wave. Cassette tapes are analog and Cd's are digital.

Google and Doubleclick merger

If Google.com and Doubleclick.com are allowed to merge together, they will hold 80% of the advertising on the internet as their own. Companies such as Microsoft and Yahoo are extremely opposed to this possible merger, but I think that is mostly due to the fact that they missed out on getting doubleclick.com for themselves. Those companies that oppose the merger are making it a point to bring doubleclick.com's "technique" into the eyes of the public and the lawmakers in order to prevent the two companies from being able to merge together. Doubleclick.com uses IP addresses to build user profiles that use cookies to show where on the web and what sites users cisit, so that they can narrow down their advertising to be user specific and this is where much of the controversy is. Using cookies to track users is treading a thin line between spyware and good business. I've noticed while browsing the web, that some sites allready tend to do some "tracking" in order to display advertisements that are more prone to be clicked by a specific user. On Myspace.com, there is a section of "sponsered links" that for me, are always related to Volkswagens. While I've never actually clicked any of those links, which means their selective advertising isn't totally effective, I know understand what they are trying to do. Having personal information tracked and stored, without my knowledge, does seem like it should be a bit illegal, so it might be a good idea for lawmakers to put a stop to the google and doubleclick merge, before it becomes the largest internet advertising firm and before they have more personal information stored on computer users than anyone else.

Web Art Trends

Over the past several weeks that I've been exploring the contents of Rhizome.org, I've noticed some trends that seem to be fairly common areas of interest in the present Web Art scene. Since I am talking about art for the internet, I wanted to select one trend, actually a "tag", that I have seen on many of the artworks on rhizome.org and that "tag" is "Artificial life". The artworks that have been tagged with Artificial life seem to deal with modifying genetics or transforming biological life into a digital world. The digital setting almost seems to let the artist take on the roll of God, without actually causing any real damage or harm to biological beings. A few artworks that follow this trend are:

Debra Swack's "My Perfect Child"
http://rhizome.org/object.php?47075

and her "Animal Patterning Project"
http://rhizome.org/object.php?47081

Chris Joseph's "Eisenstein's Monster"
http://rhizome.org/object.php?47030

Another trend that I've noticed in digital art or web art, is Interactive art. Artwork that the viewer can become part of or change an aspect of the peice seems to be a big part of the current digital art scene. Being able to "touch" artwork throws the traditional museum rule of "don't touch" out the door and opens up a whole new world, an interative art world.Here are some examples:

Alan Bigelow's "Because you asked"
http://rhizome.org/object.php?47096

Chris Sugrue's "Delicate Boundries"
http://rhizome.org/object.php?46944

Net Art

When it comes to art on the Internet, there are many different approaches that can and have been taken. After looking through the list that I received through class, I decided on three Web-artworks to review in this blog.

The first website is www.whitehouse.org, which was created as a project by the Yes Men. When you compare whitehouse.org with the real website of the Whitehouse, whitehouse.gov, it is a bit funny that .org is actually a better looking site and its content is much more enjoyable than the official.gov site. I really enjoy the Yes Men's approach to this and their other sites and feel that their satirical style is dead on and helps to get their points accross.Whitehouse.org is full of great entertaining content and the numerous sections and categories could keep a viewer reading for hours.

The Website www.agencyoforphan.com takes a fairly simple approach to address a serious issue. The homepage, and the pages that are linked to it, seem like something that myself and fellow students would be able to accomplish, yet it is still effective in getting the point across. This site and its layout will be helpful in brainstorming for our next assignment.

Brody Condin's Website, www.opensorcery.net/velvet-strike/ is one that I really enjoyed. While I've never played Counter-Strike before, I know people that were virtually addicted to the game and took it extremely serious. The fact that Condin developed anti-military Graffiti that can be entered into the game and appear on the walls is really impressive. Its amazing that something as simple as a few "tags" on the wall of a game can compel players to send hate mail too opensorcery.net goes to show how effective it really is. People take the game so seriously and by reading the "flames" on this site, just goes to show how involved people get with just a game.

Wandering the internet and exploring Derive

The word Derive means to obtain or recieve from a source or to trace the origins of something. While Browsing the internet, users surf through endless contact, going from one page to another and most of the time, no one stops to think how they ended up on a certain on a certain topic or site. The image above is a dipiction of a 30 minute journey that I had while browsing the internet without having an initial goal of being online. Myspace lead me to a friend's car, that reminded me of a paint article that I had been meaning to look up once again, so I searched for Street rodder magizine's website, then started thinking about different paint ideas and supplies and thats where I ended my web session. In a similar "experiment", I have used myspace started on my own page and by clicking a friend's page and then going to a page of a friend of theirs and so on, I was able to trace a path back to myself, through complete strangers friend's list. When you take the time to trace out where you have been on the internet and think about how it all relates, it can be quite intreresting. Life itself happens in a similar manner. We live our lives and become influenced and interested in so many things, but they are all related and traceable back to the origin in which they derived from.

Taxonomy, Folksonomy, and Web 2.0

In the past few years, there has been many drastic changes in the way that people use the internet and these changes have brought about a new way of searching for information and content on the internet. In the world of Web1.0, search engines seem to be programs that use a Taxonomy system in order to provide search results. They list results in order of which site have the most content relating to the search word and the hierarchy seems to have been pre determined and stays on track. Searches are broken into levels and the results or strict to the search word, making the search seem very Mechanical and scientific.
With the development of Web2.0 and the bloom of social networking sites, users are now able to share blogs, photos, music, and videos with each other, with very little effort. In order to shift through all the media that is available on these sites, such as youtube.com, myspace.com, and photobucket.com, users choose “tags” that relate to the material that they have uploaded. These “tags” are a method of Folksonomy, a collaborative categorization system, which tends to leave a sense of freedom in the searches. Different users may have different interpretations of a word for a “tag” which tends to make searches come up with much broader and often more interesting results. The Folksonomy and “tag” system can take users on a journey through the interpretations of other users and can sometimes end up introducing a searching user to something completely new that might interest them.

Hypertext:The Garden of Forking Paths

The Garden of Forking Paths, by JL Borges, can be read in a regular text format at http://courses.essex.ac.uk/lt/lt204/forking_paths.htm, but the same story as been turned into a hypertext document at http://www.geocities.com/papanagnou/cover.htm and there, it takes on a new modern look and approach that goes along with the very definition of "hypertext". The prefix hyper means an overcoming of the normal and old linear contraints that written text has been stuck too since ancient times. To read the hypertext document, the reader must click on words/links that take them to another part of the story and hypertext itself is known as text on a computer that will lead users to other areas that contain related information. The use of the hypertext or hyperlinks in The garden of Forking paths is ironic because depending on which word you decide to click, it could take you down a path to a different part of the story. Once a reader realizes that the hypertext must be utilized to read the story and each of its sections, it becomes a very natural way to read through a story online and is almost easier than scrolling through a whole traditional text document online, where a reader can tend to get overwhelmed and continueously lose their place.

my web 2.0 experiance

Web 2.0 is unescapable in today's society...

Myspace
Facebook
Photobucket
Youtube
google

I use the above on a daily basis and they all fall into the web 2.0 category.