Reading Response- Murti

Krisna Murti's article, New Media: Guerrilla Culture to Gadget Art, responds to the different modes of thought and benefits to new media in the face of criticism and fear or misunderstanding of the new medium. Murti talks about how people have viewed digital media as a danger and threat to society: many of these opinions remain strong today. For example, there is the fear that social interaction is a skill that is waning due to the distance created by technology, or that technology sets a bad example for the younger generations in terms of violence. Certainly, this fear is a cycle that will continue to be renewed with the introduction of something that has not been seen before; even comics were an art form that certain generations were skeptical of.

Murti illuminates the positive aspects and underlying messages of digital media even through examples of the more offensive or harmful products of digital media. The bombing in Indonesia set off by a cell phone ring, and cyber-hacking to release secret or censored information are two examples that might be seen as extremely dangerous, and exhibit a strong argument for why new media and technology is negative. However, Murti defines these examples by transforming their negativity into potential for the positive. The bombing in which the bomber did not need to be present is an example of alternative presence in real time- the person does not have to be present in the actual space to have an effect. This crosses into boundaries of social media like Skype, and even artistic interactive spaces where the art and program of a project can interact and change with the viewer and audience while they are viewing the piece. Cyber-hacking is a way of rebelling against overpowered authority and placing authority and clarity into the hands of the common person. Art does this by making the tools to make digital art readily available to anyone- such as the ability to create video, GIFs, websites, post photos outside of a gallery setting, etc.

While these examples may be controversial, there are important insights into these ideas. I was especially intrigued with the ideas of time and how digital media creates a flexible gallery space in which time and space can be flexible in terms of the presentation of the material. I also began thinking about the contradiction related to the sense of time and space in digital media and technology especially in relation to the website that I have made. While web spaces can be considered to be permanent and timeless spaces for a piece of work or information, and that this is a place where people can access the information on this site always, the way in which the industry and new media art grows means that there is consistent and rapid change. The access and viewership of these pieces transcend time, but they cannot always transcend interest and modern culture, which is something that has to be continually reconciled to make work, and even the medium relevant for an extended period of time.

Self-Assessment Two

This project is a combination of two different processes: 1) improving the web design of my website, and 2) creating three more stop motion animated commercials in continuation of the first project. I hoped to finish the most work-intensive and central component of my publicity campaign for the Campus Farm, and I succeeded in doing so. Because much of the process for making the animations was very similar to what I talked about in the first self-assessment, I will be focusing on the improvement of the website, which was inspired by the unattractive layout that I had made last semester.  The website was too dark, the color scheme was not visually pleasing, and the buttons on the home page seemed to create disorganization on the page.

I began by looking into websites that were much cleaner, such as my friend’s template website, The Young Catholic Woman. My first design was inspired by a desire to illustrate the earthiness that I was promoting, but the picturesque background of dark soil seemed to be a dated and dark method of doing so. I found the cleaner, and lightly-colored websites to be much more attractive. So, I began to work with Adobe Kuler for a more pastel color scheme. This part of the process was incredibly time-consuming, and required hours of playing with different shades, tones, and color combinations. I looked into premade color schemes, and considered color options that I had not previously, such as purple, blue and yellow earth tones, and this opened my mind to different color options. I ended up using a Digital Color Meter to extract lighter shades from my main image on the home page in order to gather the colors that I needed, and noted their Hex numbers. My color scheme relies predominately on three colors: white, olive, light green, and dark brown.

Next, I needed to better organize my site. I enjoy the consistency of a banner and navigation bar along the top of the page to give every page solidarity and cohesiveness, and ease of navigation at all times. The hardest part of this process was creating a rollover navigation bar using CSS. I attempted to create this navigation bar several times, using different references, but succeeded in finding a very user-friendly YouTube video byMohit Manuja. I had issues centering this navigation bar though, so I had to use an additional source that told me to separate commands for the “ul” and the “li” aspects- I still do not fully understand this concept, but I do know that it worked.

The last part was to build the banner. I wanted to keep an earthiness to the site, but without overwhelming the page with realistic images. So, I took a picture of basil and made it black and white, overlayed a transparent layer of the light green on top of the image, and then painted the edges of the image so that it would blend better with the background of the webpage itself. I used a cursive font for the title so that it looked journalistic and handwritten, to reflect the journalistic nature of the written content.

I spent a large portion of time solely on the web-editing aspect of the design in order to ensure its professionalism and aesthetic appeal. There were many times that I wanted to give up on different parts, but I was able to pull through, and even search for alternative resources when others were failing me. I should have used the TA option more heavily, but I was insistent and pride-driven to figure this out without much guidance, which is folly. I believe my time was well-spent, and contributes to a large success in the inviting appeal of the website as a whole.

The final product is definitely more cohesive and attractive than the original. The color scheme is lighter, warmer, and more reflective of the spiritual and healing atmosphere that I am trying to convey with the project as a whole. It is more organized, and easier to navigate by eliminating the necessity to return to the home page for navigating the website, and allows the audience the ease of skipping around the pages without extraneous clicking. There are a few edits that I still need to make in terms of making the site more pleasing. The videos needs to be larger to emphasize the artwork that I slaved over and to show the reader that this video is just as important, or related to the writing below it. There needs to be a minimum and maximum window size setting so that the writing does not become too close together if the window is too thin, and the content of the page is not overwhelmed by the green-to-white gradient background if the window is too large. I also need to fix the pictures hanging over the bottom line of the writing section.

I think that my project is cohesive and inviting, and I hope that my audience will appreciate it in the coming month. I believe that I deserve an A for my efforts.

Final Project 2

Visit my website!

Website Research

So, my goal for this project is to do more of the animations and to tweak my website to make it look better. I have chosen a couple of websites that have the basics of what I want the end product to look like.

Last semester, I chose Paravel as a website that I enjoyed the taste of. I still want to keep this model of organization.

Within the site is a portfolio of different sites that the team has worked to create. The layout of the site is very simple, using black and white rollover images in a grid layout to organize their works. After clicking on their images, you are taken to a new page where they have a large image capturing the design of their sites. 

      Below the main image, the page is divided into several small sections by a simple gray line. Each section contains small captures of aspects of the sites they create, and then simply describe the process of their designs. Their images are very clean, but they add in elements of "homemade" which is most likely Ray's doing. 

       They create responsive web sites, which are supposed to be very easy to use and available to resize on several different technological appliances, so they make good use of Div Tags, as opposed to AP Div Tags, which is a good choice in a time where smartphones and tablets are becoming more popular in use. Their simple and sleek web layout is attractive, easy to read, and easy to negotiate. 

I also wish to emulate the journalistic blog style of my friend, Carolyn, who used a template to build her website The Young Catholic Woman. She adds a lot about her personal anecdotes and opinions, and she ends up having lot of writing, but this is successfully broken up by large pictures that help to add visual content. Sometimes her visuals are interesting because there has to be a forced connection between the visual and the written context, this connects with the Osborne reading that we did about how we receive art in distraction, and how art is distraction.

For websites, where the general idea of being online is an inherent distraction because there is such easy access to alternate information, the tone of websites and the affected culture of reading seems to need a lot of visual content to help distract the reader every once in a while in order to maintain interest in the information. Carolyn's use of large pictures that alternate sides of the blocked text area succeeds in this type of distraction.