the process

Last weekend, I came up with an idea for a community CD/DVD swap. I created some disc holders that resemble the logo below (real pictures coming soon…). They are pretty flexible and hold plenty of CDs –my bet is that they hold at least 25.

The Swag Swap is an effort to encourage the gift economy and to let people realize that all digital information is free and free to share. I’m working on a website right now that explains it in more detail. One thing that I really need is content. If you would like to put a CD in one of the Swag Swaps or several, let me know. Even if you want to get me content, I’ll make some copies of it for you.

My appropriation project is finally done. It’s a lot different than the last version. Take a look.

*Update: it works now, it’s just a little slow.

My project is finally going somewhere. I’ve put up a rough version of it here. I still need to gather images and diversify my sources, gather some images to replace Jose (they are going to shuffle) on the right side, and refine how the images show up. Take a look.

Once again, I have decided to change my project idea (even though I have a week left to do it…) For the new project, I want to compare the news that comes out of independent media versus major mainstream news releases. More specifically, I will take the images that are produced in a flickr search of the independent media’s keywords to the images that are produced in a google images search of the mainstream headlines. I really want to emphasize the difference between the images that these sources create and the things that aren’t mentioned on the mainstream news.

Half of the message is going to be conveyed through the interface and the visuals. The interface is going to have the halves of two faces and make one whole face. Half of the face will be George W. (who else?!) and the other half will cycle through nameless Americans of different identities and races (if all goes according to plan…). The images that come out of the searches will then come out of their eyes. The images will then fill up the screen. If the two sources share words, then those images will hang around at the center. If the words are different, the words will gravitate to their respective sides.

I am definitely biting off more than I can chew, but hopefully I’ll come out with something in the end. I am already coming across numerous problems (does anyone know how to make a signed applet?), but so far, I am finding ways around them. If you have any suggestions for me, please let me know. I plan on working with Processing for the most part and then the Flickr API and the Google API for images and then RSS feeds from the sources.

Early last week, I wrote a post about searching for an idea for my next project. I have finally narrowed it down. I am hoping to make a world map where the land is represented by images (dynamic from RSS feeds if possible).

The images will hopefully represent the effect of the United States on these places. The images come from non-mainstream sources–sometimes in other languages–that tell about our effect on the world. When you rollover an image, it will be magnified in the US’s space. The whole piece is going to be a lot prettier than this mock-up, of course. It will also not have duplicate images. The images will then link to the post itself.

I am going to run into some major problems, though. One is that I need to find enough sources (with images) that write about these things. The next thing is programming. I think I would be able to make something like this in Processing with an XML parser, but that depends on the sources having similar formatting. So if anyone has some input on these things–especially where to get these sources–I would love to hear it.

I’m finally starting to narrow down my ideas (or come up with good ones). I’m really inspired by HOPE.ACT.CHANGE. The project, created by Syrup, is one of the most innovative pieces I’ve seen in awhile. Another thing that interests me is the way that all the projects pull from tons of sources on the internet.

So I’m thinking of doing a project that pulls images from news feeds around the world, so that people are introduced to new images. The news we get here in the U.S. (from the mainstream sources) is an extremely small bit of what is really going on in the world. We never see the side of the people or other governments unless we search hard for it, and most people don’t do that.

Racking my brain in an attempt to come up with an idea on Thursday didn’t lead to much. In general, I want to do something more on the technical side of net art–using code as a tool rather than something like Photoshop. But since I couldn’t code anything in an hour of class, I did a little collage with Photoshop and then animated it with flash. I took some of the site http://wwwwwwwww.jodi.org/ and made a small collage to make it a little more confusing. I was going to have it link to some random places as well, but ran out of time. Click here to see the page…

I’ve finally started a delicious page that has most of my previous firefox bookmarks and now some new netart links. Take a look:

http://del.icio.us/_ira

I’ve found a couple of interesting pieces and collections of netart. One site that collects it is Tate Online. They have a piece that collected a lot of break-up information in 2005 from blogs across the net that’s entertaining:

Unfortunately I have been stuck in Denver all weekend. Normally I try to get out of here and up to the mountains, but we’re filming the first section of our video this weekend. Since there is nothing else to do here, I’ve actually been useful and done some designing that I’ve been putting off. First, I made a new logo in illustrator that I think turned out pretty well:

The film I’m working on is a short (10 minutes) narrative film called The Night Shift for a class in the MCOM dept with Dan Packman and Shea Scott. We did pre-production for the winter quarter and started filming on Saturday night and are filming again on Sunday. With 10 weeks of planning, we thought we were so prepared that it would be easy. We were wrong. It almost didn’t even happen. Last minute problems: the coffee shop tells us that we will have to pay the employees ($12/hour), and we forgot to get a boom mic. But we pulled through and it went fairly well. In just one night, we learned a ton of stuff and it will all go a lot more smoothly from now on.

The last thing I am doing is working on a website for the Youth Sports Photography Network. It is going pretty well, but keeping me busy in my free time for the weekend.

So where does that leave net art? I’m still looking for an answer to that. I was able to spend some time with del.icio.us. I uploaded all my bookmarks and did a little networking. Since I never have time to look for sites myself, linking up with others let me expand the my list of design sites exponentially. My next task is to delve deeper into this sort of networking and expand into the realm of net art. Also learning to format the blog would be good…