Author: Winny Wang

Understanding Comicsby Scott McCloud reflects back on the root and definition of comics, it contributes to the debate of medium and its use. Although there are some of his arguments that I don’t fully agree, just like the narrative character in Understanding Comics makes a toast and says: “HERE’S TO THE GREAT DEBATE!” (23), I find the whole process of deeply thinking and exploring interesting and meaningful.

There are predominant situation-setting outside this conversation of comic definition. For example, onIntroductionold pal of the narrative character ironically jokes: “AREN’T YOU KIND OF YOUNG TO BE DOING THAT SORT OF THING?” Later on Page 3, the boy refers comics as “CRUDE, POORLY-DRAWN…” (3) There are more scenes like these, they all tell readers that comics and comics producers are facing negative problem of being labeled or put in a framework of (1) What comics should be like; (2) What comics producers should act. To have a clear analysis of the root of this way of thinking, Scott McCloud points the importance of defining comics. We shouldn’t focus on the styling or coloring; they are all surfaces of the question. It’s time to look at comics as a modern way of medium, and comics is way more complicated then we might think. We should stop viewing it simply as images or drawing in order to emphasize the uniqueness of comics which are not overlapped with other ways of medium.

One uniqueness I find is the relation between comics and people who read it, in order words, how comics is processed in people’s mind. For this issue, Scott McCloud created a funny scene where comics character “tell” the readers something but then “point out” there is actually no one “said” a word. (25) This leads to the issue of what is real and unreal, in this case of comics, it is often ignored by people that we readers are always using our imagination when reading comics. For example, we will treat an outlet as a human face (32). According to Scott McCloud, this is because “WE HUMANS ARE A SELF-CENTERED RACE” (32). Intentionally or not, humans imagine objects as one of their own, looking for the ultimate of overlapping between human and non-human. Furthermore, it creates a better way of connecting we and non-human, as an extension of human sense, awareness of self. Maybe one day (almost current), we need to rethink and explore the definition of human!

Link: http://imanas.shanghai.nyu.edu/~pw1101/week2/

Here is a screenshot: 

To finish this exercise, I took a lot of time just trying to get familiar with using css. One of the most difficult part for me is that there are multiple ways to organize the layout, but I don’t know which one/ones I should use. Sometimes, I use different ones and find out nothing has changed. So it may take me more time to build a map about the use/differences among these tags or class functions. 

This article gives me an interesting perspective to look at media, and also ask many other questions about the forms of media and the content of media. It would not be easy to think what the “content” is actually is. “Content” can be delivered in visual, audio forms, or sometimes a “thing” has its “content” without having anything to be done. For example, the author writes: “The ‘content’, as people used to ask what a painting was about…what a house or a dress was about” (155).But after watching a video or listening to a song, what “content” is received? Can whoever receive the “content” just show it to others? The answer is no. Content needs to be greatly constructed in human’s minds, it is related to the process of thinking, analyzing and believing. Sometimes different people may receive different contents even though they watched the same movie. In this way, I agree with the author that “The content or uses of such media are as diverse as they are ineffectual in shaping the form of human association”. Therefore, in a way beyond that, “… it is only too typical that the ‘content’ of any medium blinds us to the character of the medium” (152).

So to people like General David Sarnoff who hold the opinion that “The products of modern science are not in themselves good or bad; it is the way they are used that determines their value” (154), we can know that they have ignored the nature of medium. It is the essence of medium that human work and association, to convey the message.

This main point “medium is the message” can also be found in “The Machine Stops”, when Kuno insisted his mom to “come” and visit instead of showing digital images. If the visual visiting is the point, it won’t make sense when Kuno insisted. But different message is conveyed by a real visit, therefore the content doesn’t matter as much as the nature of medium itself does.  

Course: Communications Lab

Instructor: Ann Chen

Link to homework website: http://imanas.shanghai.nyu.edu/~pw1101/week1/hw1.html

I created a basic website using tab skills in HTML. It was pretty easy to use different tabs to add information on the website, but I found it still complicated to get familiar with the coding structure. And saving the codes is also a difficulty for me.

I used many pictures connected with website links, in order to give my users a simple experience when they want to know more & go to another website.

To improve my website, I want to learn more about creating <style> tabs and how to manipulate the space among texts and pictures. I would like to put my main picture in the center for a better visual effect. But since I haven’t learned about that, for this time, I keep all my info on the left side. 

Below is an exported PDF of my website, in case the link doesn’t work: 

My Profilo PDF

Response to Long Live the Web

The Web has only existed in this world for a few decades, but it is quite hard to fully understand how important its role has been in everyday life. Not only for generations who grew up with the Web but also for older generations who later get accustomed to the widely use of Web, people are already living in a world taking the Web as granted. What’s more, people build their lives based on the Web. That’s why we can have the title “Long Live the Web”—the Web is the the King—while in this article, it turns out there is more than the developing history of the Web that people should know and be concerned with.

In the article, Tim Berners-Lee demonstrated “We create the Web, …this process is completely under our control”. However, there are more responsibilities to protect and defend the right use of the Web, as Tim Berners-Lee said, “It is by no means finished”. To help having a macro-understanding of the situation, the author introduced the principle of universality, which promises every user the right to universally use and share information through the Web. This is also the basic user right that every Web-user should have. Beyond this principle, users are also able to create applications without any permission or having to pay. With such huge efforts, the Web can finally be in great use and connect the world.

Living now in a world where the Web is deeply attached in every aspects of life, safety in cyber world is of more and more concern, not only in illegal use but also in dark and complex political use. Therefore, Tim Berners-Lee reflects back on what much people have been through over the development of the Web and finally points back the core of importance: “The goal of the Web is to serve humanity”. This is something we shouldn’t neglect.

Response to A Network of Fragments

The author of this article creatively shows us that what we are missing& what we can’t live without can actually be related in a close way.

“There is something profoundly comforting about the small signifiers, about all of the things that are just out of the corner of your eye, doing their thing, apart from you but maybe connected to you via an imaginary diaphanous traceroute”. It is aesthetic to picture these small signifiers, they are the connections of two layers of one world and it is forgotten for a long time that there is always a view of the world that people hardly see, imagine or even understand. But they are there, those fragments, they are doing their jobs assigned by people who know better about their world and the fragments mark the complexity in their beautiful way.

Isn’t it interesting to think reversely that the whole world is just made up in the forms of fragments. What are the fragments of the layer of world within sight? ““It’s my hope that these … souvenirs … will someday merge, blur—cohere is the word, maybe—into something meaningful.”