Author: Shirley Liu

A. Design

Matt and I worked together for the final project. Our website has a very minimalistic theme using black and white as the main colors. We chose a font that was very blocky and geometric to match our theme. We presented twelve different stories of happiness told through a flipbook like animation of the animal.

 In our website, we first briefly explained how the Chinese zodiac came to be in order to give the user some background if they have not heard of the Chinese zodiac or if they wanted to know a little more about it. We then provided a link that brings the user to the main page with all the different animals. There, the user learns of the aim of our project as we give background into the process of the project and how we went to interview many different people. When you close the information box, you are able to click on the different animal squares and see the stories of 12 different people. Once you click on one of the animals, you will be presented with a page that includes the audio clip alongside a flip book like animation corresponding to the zodiac animal. If the user wishes to see other animals, they can go back to the home page and click on the one they want to see or use the arrows located at the bottom of the page. The order the animals are in for the website is the order that they are in for the Chinese Zodiac.

B. Process
For our project, we were nervous because of the time limit due to changes in our ideas. Our time was limited because it was really hard for us to decide on a idea for the final project. In the beginning we wanted to do a mad-lib inspired project with flip books made to cater the user’s choices. However, we were not too invested in the idea and were not completely interested. After speaking with the professor, we realized that we should making something that we actually enjoyed and were excited about doing. However, we eventually came up with an idea that we were excited to work on because it included interviewing people which I thought was very interesting and pushed us to find people and hear what they have to say.  Even with limited time, we were able to finish the project on time and have a website that was functioning and what we wished to accomplish. Matt and I split up the work pretty evenly with Matt handling the drawings of the animations as well as the collection of the audio while I worked on coding the website and zodiac icon drawings. At the end, we ran into some difficulties putting all the elements together but in the end we were successful in combining all the elements.

C. Future
I really enjoyed working on this final project with Matt and I loved listening to the stories from everyone that we interviewed.  I believe we achieved our goal of wanting to create a website that presented the Chinese zodiac in a new way however we are lacking in some elements. It would be cool in the future if we were able to collect more stories from around the world and if we added an element where the user is able to tell their own story and add a flip book. Some people in our class suggested that we add stories that varied in ages to present the idea that there are things in common between older and younger generations linked to one’s Chinese zodiac sign. Moreover, if we had more time I think adding more interactive elements to display the stories in a new way would make it more interesting to the user. Being able to surprise the user for each animal would be pretty interesting because they would have something new to look forward to when they clicked the arrow button. Overall, it was a pleasure making this website as we were able to achieve something that started out as a drawing in my journal. It would be really cool to further develop our website if we ever get a chance to as the concept is pretty interesting to me. 

Before reading Rachel Greene’s “A History of Internet Art”, I did not really understand the term “internet art.” I thought it was something that started very recently, however I learned that it started in 1995 by accident. Internet art is more than just presentation of artwork and interaction with the user, it allows us to see the ideas circulating around during a specific time period. I think it is interesting to see how the different ideas can be presented in various ways by various creators such as artists and technoculture critics. I also found it very interesting that net.artists dove into feminist issues. I found the VNS’ “Cyberfeminist Manifesto” to have some pretty interesting and bold statements. It angered me when I found out that who cared about cyberfeminism were told to take the discussion elsewhere. It also made me wonder how would internet art compare if it had started now and not in the 1990s. Reading Greene’s piece makes me excited about our upcoming internet art project. I am inspired by the many different examples provided in Greene’s article and am thinking of the different roads I can take to approach this project. 

Link to NY Train Project

Created by: Adam Chang

Adam Chang’s NY Train Project offers a look into the art in New York’s subway system. Growing up in New York City, I took the train often and did not notice the different mosaic works in each station. It was not only till my ceramics class in my senior year of high school did I really think about the artistic components of the NY subway system. After my teacher mentioned the tiles that were unique to each station, I started paying more attention to them. So it was really cool to see all the different mosaics from all the lines on Chang’s website. It was pretty fascinating to look at the stop that I lived on because  something as small as the font on my stop reminded me of home. On the website, I went through the lines that I frequented and thought about whether or not I recognized them. The project was pretty cool and I think now when I see the mosaic, it would leave a more lasting impression on me. 

I also thought it was neat for Chang to include the number of metro card swipes used for the project along with the time spent as well as the number of stops covered. I overall really enjoyed interacting with this website because it reminded me of home. 

Click here to view our video project.

Background:

At first, we were having some trouble trying to find a topic that we would like to focus on. We thought about maybe doing a day in the life in Shanghai or a tour around Shanghai. In the end, we chose to focus on pollution which is still a problem that is relevant to Shanghai. Our video mainly uses scenes from around Shanghai but the problem is prevalent all around the world. After deciding the overall topic of our video, we thought about how we wanted to film our video. We were thinking of a documentary inspired video where we have scenes from around Shanghai that reflect pollution. As the scenes play, we would have a poem in the background to discuss the issue of pollution. We also decided to include a few commercials that provided comic relief but also discussed the issue of pollution indirectly. We had figured out our overall plan for the video but the next obstacle we had to tackle was the interactivity aspect of the project. We decided to create a website where the user interacts by using the controls located on the right side of the TV. The buttons allow the user to change the volume with a slide bar, as well as change channels, play, pause, and restart the videos.

Process:

We started out with the filming and chose to focus on multiple locations around Shanghai. Before we went out to film we discussed some of the shots we wanted to take but we also thought of  more shots that we thought would go well with our video on the spot. We went to the bund and filmed shots of the river and the Shanghai skyline. We knew we wanted to get shots of people wearing masks but that proved difficult with our limited knowledge of Chinese. In addition to filming outside, we used videos that we shot in the filming room in 416. Working with the lighting equipment and green screen in the soundproof room was pretty cool and we were all excited to utilize what was around us. Matt handled most of the video editing through Premiere. I worked with handling the basic foundations of our website by making functions for the three buttons (play, pause, and restart) and the volume slider. I had trouble at first with making the volume slider but later realized that I could change the volume by setting as a fraction over 100, 100 being the loudest. Additionally, I ran into a lot of challenges with figuring out the setup so that the video fit into the TV screen. I figured out how to move the video to behind the TV screen using Z-index. At first, I adjusted the sizes of the video and margins so that the video would fit behind the TV. However, I realized that the video may move if put on another display. Later, I used percentages to organize the layout. Then, we ran into another problem which was the fact that part of the video was cut off so it seemed slightly off centered. So, Alina adjusted the TV frame size so less of the video would be cut off.

Conclusion: 

Overall, I really enjoyed working with my Matt and Alina on this project. We were all pretty excited after figuring out what we wanted to do, but having exceeded our expectations, I feel really proud and happy for what we created. Partner cooperation was pretty smooth and this project is absolutely one I will remember.