Author: zy1193

In the final presentation, we got some critiques from our classmates, professor and fellows, they are very valuable and worth to reflect.

1. Better to use some colors which are easy for the audiences to read the text.
2. Use a theme line to connect all the sites (e.g. a food trip along the Silk Road), instead of letting the icon move randomly and without intention. Also, use some region to represent the food instead of picking only one city.
3. The initial position of the little guy is not obvious enough, and people might not notice it. Maybe put it in another corner (e.g. in the sea).
4. set a button, if you click the button the icon will change, not only the man, woman the other animals can also be included.
5. The instructions for clicking the mouses/pressing spaces are a bit confusing. And both using mouse and the key is quite confusing too.
6. the border of the map is quite confusing. Drawing a map can raise some sensitive debates on borders. Focus more on the food instead of the map.

I think that although what we are creating is artwork, what we should consider is more than the art. We can’t complicate it to a political issue or social issue. I think I should think more fully next time.

Link: http://imanas.shanghai.nyu.edu/~zy1193/project4/project4.html

Description:

In this project, me and ploy decide to make a food map of China, cuz we both love traveling and exploring the food. So we use a small man icon to represent the visitor and the audience can use the arrow key to control it and lead him to the city they want. After you enter the city, you can see the most famous food there and its culture as well as history.

Process: 

I was responsible for the code part and ploy was responsible for the drawing part. Then, we record the sound together. The recording part is really interesting. Because the sound we try to record is not that recognizable and distinguish. So to gain more effect, we even try to add the water to the hot oil. The effect was really good but somehow a little dangerous. After ploy cut and edit the audios, I put the images and audios into the webpage. Doing the code is really complicated. I created the main page as a big framework. And create the first page’s coding framework. The code framework for the five food page is all the same. So then, ploy changed the picture and audio in the page based on my code and do the other four page.

Challenges:

The first problem I met is how to make the icon arrive at the city and then the star can be lightened. I went to the fellows for help, and use the console log to get the position of the icon and use JS to set a function.

The second problem is how to make the curtain effect. It is really complicated. And need to cut the picture manually. Some code from the internet is really beyond our class, so I went to ask fellows, and they told me that I don’t have to stick to their code, there are so many ways to achieve the same effect. 

The third problem is that it’s really hard to explain the culture and history background of food to the audience in a very easy way. The text, the image, the audio how to place them all together in an art website is really a tough job.

Conclusion:

I felt very rewarding and engaged in the coding part. Although I spent a lot of time on it, I actually learned a lot of knowledge that I didn’t understand in the previous class and even some the class didn’t teach. I think learning shouldn’t be restricted to the class, when we want to achieve our own goal and explore it, it is more interesting to learn. 

Also, I think the user test part is really useful, we can see something we didn’t notice before and make our project better.

This article introduces the history of the formation of internet art. Before reading this article, I don’t really know what is internet art.  The author explains that it started in 1995 by accident. It may accidentally start by some individual attempts to create the art on the internet, but it truly starts at the point when people see the existing art on the internet and interact with it. Since then, Internet art can be said to have opened up a new world of art and culture. The creative logic of Internet art from the beginning is to serve the special media of the Internet. They exist only in digital media and do not depend on material substance as traditional art does. Network art can exist in the form of web pages, text, animation, video and other works on the Internet as the main stage. The artists have more freedom to create their works, which can be seen by people all over the world. The expansion of the audience means the artists can meet the audience with the same taste greatly which increased the artist’s enthusiasm and inspire them to create something new.  But on the other hand, there is a potential problem that whether the artist will cater to the mainstream media in pursuit of click-through rate, thus lost their own unique style. Mainstream ideas will restrict creation. Considering these two features of net art, I somehow understand why the author says the net art is the equivalent of the animals in the zoo. 

I chose the artwork: “Reabracadabra” from Eduardo Kac.

The work is an animated visual poem composed of a large letter A, surrounded by orbiting consonants from the word “abracadabra”.

I was really confused when I first watched the video. I cannot figure out what is going on. After reading the background information, I knew that this visual poem was created and displayed on Videotexto, Brazil’s pre-Internet telecommunications network, which was implemented in 1982 to provide public information and user-to-user messaging systems through special terminals. Since telephone lines in Brazil were a rare and valuable commodity at that time, most of them could be used in public places such as libraries or shops.

I felt like this work is kind of text-driven media, which means the poem’s meaning should be understood as part of a dynamic overall environment. From this method, I can see that poetry or text is  dynamic, although a little abstract.

Link:

http://imanas.shanghai.nyu.edu/~zc1151/commLab/VideoProject/index.html

Design:

We designed a story that happens in two popular girls in the school. One of the stylish girls thinks she is popular so she does whatever she wants and doesn’t care about the others. Her friend is popular as well but still cares about the other. So in the end, the mean girl lost her friends, and the considerate girl becomes more popular. We presented this story by writing a diary.

Process:

I have to admit that the process is really tough. When we first tried to discuss the storyboard, it’s really difficult to gather four people at the same time. So we just use the class time to create a rough idea. I thought there is no continuity between scenes, so me and Cecilia talked about it later after class and make it more doable. Cecilia drew the storyboard and sent the explanation into the group chat, but I think Lily and Kat may not understand it clearly, so we explain and debate more when we started shooting. I invited two of my friends to be the actress, the shooting process was very efficient because two actresses are really good at acting. We used two cameras to shoot the establishing shot and a close shot respectively.

Cecilia worked on the whole coding part, so I tried to devote to the editing part. I used both iMovie and premiere to edit the video. I use iMovie to cut a rough demo and used premiere to polish it. I felt premiere is so much harder than iMovie, and there is so much knowledge I need to learn. Moreover, I think to add the background music is really a tough job, some part of the scene is not really fit it.

Reflection

I think teamwork is really important in this process. It’s really terrible to see someone who didn’t do much work but criticize someone who contributes a lot to this project. Sometimes we should listen to and respect others, as we are a team, cannot be too egotistical.

Also, I think there is so much about shooting and editing I need to learn and improve.