Author: Kai Zheng

Link: Cities

Design:
My project, Cities, begins as a replica of a macbook desktop. You are able to find out what made me and my partner fall in love with different cities: Richmond, New York, and Shanghai. The icons of each cities represent folders that open up a slide show of the illustrations we drew that correlate to each city. There are also three audio elements to each individual city- a music track that begins when you click on the icon and a quote or a voiceover we wrote specifically for that city. Also, there are addition functions such as naming your city, and dragging each city icon like folders just as you would on a regular desktop.

Process:
I will use this segment of the reflection to acknowledge the feedback that was given to me by classmates, fellows, and professors. Because the process was carefully described in my documentation, I want to utilize this part to talk about areas that I might have missed that my peers and superiors have brought up.

1. There were a few suggestions to include a map of a globe for the desktop background instead of the clouds, because I guess that would help people visualize their cities realistic placements better.
   1. I purposefully chose to leave the background a little bit abstract, so not to confine the viewer to only one way of thinking.
2. We also were asked if there were any other functions with the untitled cities icons that we wanted to show.
   1. Given more time, we should have definitely included more functions where you upload your own photos into the slideshow for your renamed cities. That would have made my project, Cities, much stronger and even more interactive.
3. We were told that the webpage looks super personal and intimate, and the art and audio and “sentimental” and “handmade”.
4. Exploratory mindset, interactivity was minimal but thought out.
   1. For 3 & 4. Thanks!
5. It might’ve been water, wasn’t sure how it looked.
   1. We’re open to more abstract ideas of thinking, this is exactly why I didn’t want to choose a globe for the background.
6. The webpage makes me want to work on it too.
   1. I’m so glad that’s the way you felt about this project, which brings me to the…

Future:
As mentioned before, given more time, I would have definitely liked to implement a p5 javascript piece of code so that people will be able to upload their own image files, and possibly even audio files to really make the Cities webpage their own. This way, the interactivity component would be so much deeper and can resonate with anyone that comes to our webpage.

Project Name- CitiesXCommLab
Created by: Jikai Zheng and Evan Xie

Our link: http://imanas.shanghai.nyu.edu/~jz2477/Cities/cities.html

Description: For this project, I actually had two ideas, but Evan liked the one about cities more, so we went with this one. The original question I had was: How do we fall in love with cities? That became the premise and source of inspiration for the whole project. I shared a photo of an old mac desktop background with Evan, and we agreed that it would be cool to have recreate something looking like that for the final net art project.

A brief description of what we were going for: A website that looks like a desktop, with folders that are icons of cities, some representative of our own hometowns, which were Richmond, New York, and Shanghai. When you clicked on some of the untitled icons, you will be able to name it after a city. With our cities, Richmond, New York, and Shanghai, we drew some artwork, scanned them, and edited them in Photoshop. Actually, all the artwork in this website were all made by us with minimal digital processing. You will also be able to drag all the cities like actual folders on a mac desktop.

Process: I first got started with coding the html and css. I’m also getting more familiar with javascript, so it wasn’t as intimidating this time. These next screenshots are some examples of the coding we did.
These were booleans, because of the true/false statements, I used them to allow people to name the untitled citis. 

Counters, and also arrays for Richmond. Also, the openwindow, changeImage, and closeImage (not shown) were vital in making the slideshow work and incorporating audio. 
However, there were many things we did for this project that wasn’t concerned with the code. Evan did all the music for the project. We also wrote a small blurb about our cities and found a quote for them, which we recorded in a voiceover. As mentioned before, the art was pretty much all handmade, and that was the most fun part about this project for me.

Challenges: Some issues included the sizing of the images within the imgframe, and also some minor tweaking for the background to be less bold and bright. We tried very hard to rework css, in the sizing of some of the photos, and that happened to be the hardest part of coding this project.

Post Mortem: Our project, in the end, really did reach the goals I had in mind in the beginning. I felt that I got to input a bunch of the coding sessions we did in some earlier classes such learning draggable, addEventListeners, and arrays. It made me really proud to know that I could understand whether something was a boulean or an array or a counter. Those would be the first indicators that I finally understood what each function of the code was for. From this point on, I don’t feel so wary about coding, especially with javascript, and I’m glad I learned these skills in this class.

Upon reading Rachel Greene’s article on net.art, I knew very little the type of art that is distinctively born on the internet- the type that lives and thrives off the interaction that the internet allows. Although these internet art conceptions are no longer in their developing stages, I still have not grouped these new-media art types into their own category. In other words, when net.art is mentioned, nothing popped up in my mind that is conclusively clear or concrete. However, I read Greene’s exposition on the history: “This [email] was of paramount importance to those talking about net.art in the mid- and late ‘90s. Building an equitable community in which art was conspicuously present in one’s everyday activities was a collective goal” (162). This introduction made two things clear to me. One, internet art has existed earlier than my birth year of 1998, which means that it has been around for a while now. Two, the collective goal and ideal to uphold communication among the community of internet artists through email must have been very significant and unparalleled to how communication was delivered and received throughout other art periods.
The passage that stuck out to me the most in this article was the on Name.Space, which was a project that intended to give more freedom in domain names so that corporations or individuals will not monopolize Web addresses. This stood out to me because I was concerned about how can companies and individuals handle the medium that is the web. In a way, the web is like a public space, which means that we are responsible for how we conduct ourselves on it, especially if we choose to be net.artists.

https://itsdoing.it/

I found this internet art project through searching randomly, but I was surprised to know that I am actually a bit familiar with this concept from another class I took called Visual Culture and Social Art Practice. As it turns out, Millie Wong and her groupmates did their version of the do it project, and I heard about the book and concept through them. Thus, when I stumbled upon this site, I was pleasantly welcomed by a concept that I already knew. 

So, what is this concept? Do it began with Hans Ulrich Obrist, who apparently, if you search the web, is the world’s busiest curator. On another related note, he was the person who interviewed Yoko Ono. Oh my! The dots are all connecting together! Anyway, do it was sort of an experiment to test more flexible ways of exhibiting art. In the original book, artists of thirteen would write instructions in making something, art, writing, poetry, a donut, anything and everything beyond. I thought this idea was fantastical. 

The web version which I linked to was actually time based, meaning there were updates over the course of 45 consecutive days. Thus, there became a prolific method in which to receive instructions on how to make things, on how to do things: do it.

The website itself is one of those scrolling sites, and for each item you gaze at, you can click on it and the instructions for doing it appears. I find this idea very simple, but also I see the potential in something like this manifesting itself into becoming art projects for all kinds of people. There were many interesting instructions such as Forge signatures. Others would include drawing instructions for metaphoric objects. This project can definitely be described as an ambitious one just by the number of people it involves and instructions it provides.  

Project Name: Adam’s Big Day
Created by Adam, Kai, and Kimmy

Our link: http://imanas.shanghai.nyu.edu/~ac6596/Adam’s_Big_Day/

Description: The original idea of our video project was to take three characters’ morning routines and to juxtapose the different character’s attitudes to waking up for their day (if they woke up at all). We had Adam as the early bird who is really thrilled for his big day which revolved around opening an exhibit at an art gallery. Then, Kimmy was to be his friend who woke up too late, has a hectic morning, but makes it to the Adam’s exhibit opening just in time. In the video, I was Adam’s girlfriend who forgets to wake up, but dreams of making it partway to the event. This means you will at least seem me beginning a frantic morning in my dream and making my way to the bus. The story is supposed to have a tragic ending, because Adam realizes that his girlfriend overslept his very important event, even though his friend, played by Kimmy manages to get there in time. The purpose of the story was to firstly display how people have different urgencies in the beginnings of their days. However, the second part, tying the character’s narratives together to form one story was a little bit more difficult for us. We ended up using the art gallery as the connecting reason that linked the characters together so that our story actually had a plot.

Process: We began with writing a script, that included lists of what we needed to film. For example, Kimmy would need to wake up groggy and snoozes the alarm on her phone before beginning her day. Adam filmed Kimmy’s scenes, my in-dream scenes, and also his own scenes. He did great work at giving precise direction about how the video was supposed to be shot. I also got a friend to film some of my sleeping scenes, because it was just more convenient that way for us to work individually. Our coding process began with Adam’s version of the code, which laid out a template for how we were to go from video to video by clicking buttons. Later, these buttons will be turned into clocks that Kimmy draws so that people would notice that button looked animated and therefore enticed them to interact with it. For my video’s code, I also worked mostly on the html and javascript so that when you hovered over my head, you’d be able to see the dream video.

Other forms of interactions, as mentioned before, are the animated buttons in the form of alarm clock, phone clock, or wall clock that give you this pathway to transition to another character’s point of view, their story. This way, the viewer can see the video as a structured story and in an efficient way. Kimmy and Adam both worked on the code for their respective videos, which I really respect. That way, when we merge the videos into the final project, everyone already has a good understanding of coding with videos.
Issues: Some of the issues involved how the audio that was being recorded from the video camera. We combatted this issue by muting most of the audio in our videos and replacing it with music or recording more sound effects with a shotgun audio recorder. Another issue came from me not having the best time understanding direction as an actress. Therefore, we solved the issue by giving Kimmy a bigger part in the video. However, I didn’t let the footage Adam recorded go to waste, because I used that in my dream clips. Truly, from this process, I understand how hard film days are for actors, not to mention, amateur actresses like myself.

Post Mortem: The video project showed me how much easier coding can be when the video acts as the main source of entertainment on the browser webpage. There wasn’t as many fussy things to worry about like font or other css styling enhancements. I simply needed an onmouseover and onmouseout for my code to function desirably. I think we really did our best in trying to achieve what our original proposal was, plus more. At that stage, we didn’t even know how to tie the 3 characters together in a structured plot narrative, but we managed to figure that out later. For improvements, we should think of more interactive functions. I know Adam originally wanted to add a text box, but that didn’t make the story progress in a logical sense. Thus, our interactivity relied greatly on Kimmy’s text messages, illustrations for the clock buttons, and my dream twist plot. Overall, I’m satisfied with the product of our project and I’m really glad that I could make a film for a communications lab project.