Jon's multimedia

Wednesday, December 06, 2006

Course Evaluation

After taking this interactive multimedia course, I would have to say that I thouroughly enjoyed the flash projects the best. I do love animation and all of the possibilities that this program has to offer. I think knowledge and practice of 2D animation is an excellent bases for further 3D animation. Also, I would have to say that the programing languages were pretty important. Eventhough, I hate programing and find it to be very frustrating at times I can see many applications were it might be useful.

The most valuable assignment for me was the interactive flash piece. I think the amount of creativety that I felt when doing the project was the greatest I have felt in a long time. I realy enjoyed creating an environment for others to explore and I hope to do some more of this work. Plus, the combinations of the animation along with it were benifitial.

I would deffinately eliminate the brainstorming assignments involved with the net art site. I think that we could have cut back on those and jumped into flash a lot sooner.

Overall, I think this class was benificial in a lot of ways even if I don't see those ways at the present moment. It was definitely tough, but I feel that I have learned many valuable skills that will have future applications in my artwork.

Sunday, November 12, 2006

State-of-the-art Interactivity Comments and Josual Davis Comments

I just finished reading Jeffrey Veen’s article, “State-of-the-art interactivity?” I really enjoyed this article, and I think that he brings up many good points about web design that I would have not thought about myself. The one idea that really hit home was the fact that some commercial sites are really bad especially when it comes to displaying the products. I loved his comment, “Who on earth is doing marketing at these companies? Certainly no one who has taken pictures.” I find that to be true a lot with the way items are displayed online and I only have a small background in photography. He also brought up several good points, which I will consider in creating my websites. One of them was no limiting the user by changing certain attributes of the page and within the interface of the page. I also loved his comment about how a lot of times he pulls his headphones off, because people who embed music make it so loud. This I will try to control if I chose to ever put sound in my web pages. Overall, I think Jeff really knows what he’s talking about and that some web designers should really read this article.

I just checked out Joshua Davis’s website and it is very interesting. He is an artist with very different online pieces. The one I enjoyed the most was Pandora’s box where it kept spiraling outwards with different colors. I could honestly stare at that piece for hours. It seems that a lot of his works have a certain architectural influence on them, which I really enjoy. He creates really different environments with the timed based pieces too and I find it is interesting to watch as they change color and design. The other thing that I like just about the website itself is the interface and the different levels of interactivity. I thought his custom designed scrollbars were very creative too. Joshua is a very interesting artist and I think his pieces influence both regular art and aspects of web design.

Monday, September 25, 2006

Mental Note to Self

Never ever, ever!!!!!!..... become someone who works in webdesign. ... ever

Monday, September 18, 2006

Response to Margaret Morse

I didn't fully understand all of the points that Margaret Morse made in her article, The Poetics of Interactivity, but I think she raised some interesting points.
For one, I do believe that the world of digital media has helped women to find validation for their artwork. There are many excellent pieces done with digital video, web work, and more that are credited to well known female artist. I think that this is due to the new technology. Before there was computers or the World Wide Web, the art field consisted of the traditional arts. Even since the time of the Dutch Masters, there were very few female artists. However, with these new media based works, I think that women are able to create works that are new and different in the art world helping these women to stand out and to become well known.
I also enjoyed reading about the interactivity between he human user and the computer. It is interesting to look at the computer as another intelligent being and how humans use it to interact and interact with it at the same time. I love Morse’s comment when she says, “the anonymous relation between the user and machine enabled by an interface allows, humans, agents, bots, and simulations of humans to interact in computer supported exchange with each other as virtual subjects.” When reading this line, I could not think of anything else other than video games and how they are entirely based on interaction with virtual opponents. I guess what gets to me is the way she talks about the computer and its interface as an equal person in itself, and as another human being to interact with. The thought of being one with a computer is some what scary to think about, but it’s not until you consider these words that you realize there is some truth in them.
In this article, Morse talks about several different interactive pieces of artwork that people have created. When reading about these, I found some of the ideas that were being used were really quite genius. The one piece was a computerized version of a mother and it had certain scenarios put together and the responses of the mother varied too. One of the other fascinating pieces was the hand-eye piece where the user would put their hand into a container and the sensors inside would convert the movements of the hand into visual movements on a projected eyeball. Some of these pieces really inspired me to create an interactive piece of my own. I would like to create a piece of artwork where people could come in and explore different possibilities. Not only do I think the piece would be interesting, but I would want to see the expression on the users face as they work their way through the piece.

Tuesday, August 22, 2006

Exercise 1

Commercial Site:
Pixar Animation Studios
http://www.pixar.com

Artists Portfolio Site:
Feng Zhu Design
http://fengzhudesign.com

Experimental Website:
I Finally Found One!
http://artcontext.org/act/05/screeningCircle/

HTML:
HTML Tutorial
http://www.w3schools.com/html/default.asp
Wiz's Free HTML Site
http://www.ourhutch.com/examples

CSS:
Learning CSS
http://www.w3.org/style/CSS/learning
Cascading Style Sheets- Learning to Publish
http://www.utexas.edu/learn/css

JavaScript:
Javascript Tutorial
http://www.w3schools.com/js/default.asp
AllSyntax.com>>
http://www.allsyntax.com/javascript/18/learning-javascript-basics/1.php

Monday, August 21, 2006

Welcome one and all