Category: Leon Eckert

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Final Project Proposal – Julia Riguerra

A. Concept

For the final project, I will be working with Taylah on an interactive catcalling website. Catcalling is a social phenomenon in which sexually suggestive remarks are made toward a stranger on the street and is a form of sexual harassment. It is an unfortunately common phenomenon that many will find relatable and we hope to bring light to its nature as an epidemic, especially in large cities like New York City. I figured catcalling, which is invasive in nature, would translate well into a website through the use of different web features, such as popups, deceptive links, and autoplay audio.

B. Sources

One artist of significance in this project is the creators of the “Carbon Budget” by World Resource Institute. This is an example of an infographic that is clear, concise and informative. It presents relevant information in an easily readable format with a color display that is calming for the reader. This relates to the desired format of the website to provide information to the readers about Catcalling in a simple, easy to follow format. This also allows us to manipulate the remainder of the space (next to the infographic) to include distractions.  

http://i-cdn.embed.ly/1/display?key=fd92ebbc52fc43fb98f69e50e7893c13&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wri.org%2Fsites%2Fdefault%2Ffiles%2FWRI13-IPCCinfographic-FINAL_web.png

Another website that is a source of inspiration is that of recording artist Solange, whose site includes minimal text and many photographs. The layout of the website is visually appealing and engrossing, and if we adapt this style, we would then distract the user enough to be startled by an interruption.

https://blackplanet.com/solange/

C. Production

To accomplish this project, we will utilize various media such as audio, video, and other visuals that will engage the user and engross them. Using the alert function on JavaScript, we would interrupt the viewer’s experience on the website. Other interruptions include scroll-triggered audio of actual catcalls, popups that appear multiple times when links are clicked, amongst other things. The website will contain information about catcalling including narratives involving catcalling sourced from the Internet. The webpage will be scroll-centric in that the beginning of the page might be some innocuous, everyday subject that has nothing to do with catcalling, though the user gets interrupted anyway, effectively translating the experience of being catcalled in real life. At the bottom of the site, information and testimonials of people’s catcalling experiences will be included, as well as movie/television clips that depict catcalling.  

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Internet Art Project Proposal (final version) – Nan

Terrible as many urbanists have argued to be, contemporary urban design orients the traffic web into a direction that is less human-friendly. With the growth of vehicles per capita, traffic congestion happens all the time, and it would get even more intense during the rush hours. Traffic status may trigger emotional change. When you are driving on the road and trapped in a block, it is highly possible that you would get anxious, angry, and even mad especially if you have an emergency. If you always see green lights whenever you meet a road crossing, and the traffic is expedited all the time, it is also highly possible that you would be pleasant. Music or melody, as I would argue, also embody human emotion. A series of tones with high tempo arouses anxiety, and for those with low tempo may express a relaxing feeling. In light of such a connection, I associate the urban traffic status as a kind of symphony that is composed of anxious congestion or pleasant expediteness.

As for my final project, I propose to visualize and audiblize the real-time traffic status within the area out of the user’s choice in the city of Shanghai as an Internet Art. On the website, there would be two parallel squares in the center. One on the left would be the map, and the other on the right would be a board telling the audience how the traffic in the selected area in the map is crowded via an index in 1-10 scale (10 means super crowded). The sound, as well as the background color in the index board, would change according to where the users would move their map on the screen. The piece that the audience would hear would be a composition combined with the audience’s subjective choice as well as what the urban traffic has granted to the web page. The visualization and audiblization of the traffic status offers us a new angle to see the things happening in the urban environment, and

My project idea is mainly inspired by Listen to Wikipedia (http://listen.hatnote.com/) by Mahmoud Hashemi and Stephen LaPorte. In that project, the artists connected the API from Wikipedia, and visualized real-time updates as well as their sizes, with sounds accompanied. It inspired me to use a similar way in connecting the map API, visualize the data and audibilize the information on the website. Another inspiration comes from Matthew N. Le-Bui’s mapping project (http://usc-annenberg.maps.arcgis.com/apps/View/index.html?appid=dfdf73b1faa64daea9cb7835d62ce1can) where the author mapped the artisanal coffee shops and connected that idea with gentrification. This is a drawable, clickable, and scrollable interactive map. Although I would not do one webpage as complex as such, the idea to have a scrollable, scalable, and drawable map is what I want.

In this project, I would use JavaScript and API based on HTML and CSS to frame the webpage. Gaode Map (https://www.amap.com/) shares its API with real-time traffic status with the users, and I could incorporate that in my project with the guidance and help from Leon. As for the audio part, I would look out for sound libraries if there is any that I may use. Otherwise, I would record some scaled sounds from instruments including piano, guitar, drum, etc. The user would interact with the web page by dragging or scrolling (to resize) the map. The audio, or the symphony piece made by the traffic, would be generated from what is on the user’s screen.

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Response to Webwork – Demi Mishiev

It is interesting to see, how the internet evolved. The freedom internet once had is almost gone. One thing I am happy about is NAME.SPACE initiative.  Having domain names such as  swissbit.ch  is the epitome of freedom. 

Personally, I didn’t have much access to internet when I was younger, but people who did, keep on repeating me, that my generation ruined the internet for them. That nowadays it is filled with trash, and useless information.  Reading more about the origin of internet, then about internet art, it is clear to me, that we never ruined the internet. People before us had less instruments to express themselves, yet more freedom. 

Everything we do online, leaves a our virtual trace. One day, maybe hundreds and hundreds years in the future, more advanced society would discover our post, sites, images and other information.  Either they would be very confused or maybe, just maybe, will understand what was wrong with us.

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Response To Greene’s History Net Art

The article covers the history of the web art during the 90’s. While me and other of my classmates were born at the turn of the new century, the web art of the 90’s seems like a distant past. Thus, it is difficult to contextualize the extent of 90’s web art due to the fact that most of these sites may seemed forgotten. However, although these sites are the relic of the past, the article does mention the effect net.art and its dependencies have on the influence of the future internet art.  This project perpetuated liberal ideas that may have been rejected if expressed in real life. The internet initially allowed the artists with artistic freedom. The content is irrelevant but the idea behind the content is what survived today.

Another interesting topic the article mentions is the domination of mainstream media. What was interesting was the concept behind the name.space. This creation enabled an infinite amount of domains that would not be dominated by the mainstream companies. I thought this was an interesting concept and the more I thought about it, much of the internet employs this method. Today we have weird sites that obscure domain names. Without this name.space concept, the internet wouldn’t have had its this user created content.

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Response to History of Net Art – Thomas Waugh

My main takeaways from this article is the contrast between the modern-day internet and the internet of old. What is now just like the rest of the world — monetized and corporate, used to be a free grassroots community. From the advent of the internet, because of the lack of rules or precedents of what should or shouldn’t be done, web artists took a new route which was completely different than anything before. Because it was such a new medium meant that there were no guidelines and everything was original and new. It is hard nowadays to come up with original ideas because the internet is a huge expanse of information and people. Nobody could ever go over the entire internet. I had already had the idea that I wanted to do something really abstract and psychedelic for my final project since day one. This article is encouraging to me in a way. Even though the internet has progressed so much and so many things have already been done, no two websites are exactly the same. Coding and design are very personal and work differently based on a person-to-person basis. I feel even more excited to make my final project than ever.