Website Review : Tessa

I was looking for links to websites, and I came upon Tessas new website, and I thought I'd give it a review.

I like the homepage; It's very sleek, clean, fast-loading, and the photograph feels very welcoming, almost like it's inviting you in to view more.

The gallery page is very clean-cut and simple, and the yellow background compliments the photographs well. The script-ish font is a very nice touch, adding another more personal detail to the site. Each gallery page is well laid out, especially the arrangements of the photographs.

I understand that the "Mountains" page might have been taken near the mountains,but I don't actually see any mountains in the photographs, which is a little confusing. They're beautiful photos, I just don't think "mountains" does an adequate job of summarizing the subject.

I love the photographs of water, especially the one with the neon-blue ice. Its eye-popping, and subtly contrasts with the other very subtly and subdued-color photographs on the page. I did notice a few empty table cells along the edges that don't seem to have anything in them.

I really like the photographs, and I'd love to be able to see some of them a little bit larger. I know posting very high-res images isn't a good idea, but maybe larger lower-resolution images would work?

I'm not sure how I feel about the gallery page being yellow, while all the other pages are purple. I like the purple better as a background color, but having only one yellow page makes it a bit more noticeable. It might be better if you replaced the bright purple on your bio page with the yellow from your photography page; This would give two yellow pages, and make the bio page a LOT easier to read.

I also really like how easy your site is to navigate. On each page there's a link back to the main page. There's no constant clicking of the back button at all.

Final Project to update

Nothing much to say really. . .

I've got the colors worked out pretty well, although I had to change the template from the one I had because it had problems changing the colors the way I wanted it to.

If I had more time, I'd consider fiddling around with a third-party theme (not from Blogger, like some of these http://mashable.com/2008/05/17/70-plus-new-and-beautiful-blogger-templates/), but right now I have things running and set to this particular theme, so I'm sticking with it.

(I'd really like to do this theme,

http://bloggertricks.com/2008/06/wonderful-blogger-template-connexion.html

but changing it to Boston would take quite a while, and this late in the game I don't think it's worth it. If I'd seen it a week ago before I spent the time formatting to the current template, it wouldn't be an issue.)


I've got the rest of the photos I'll need uploaded, I'm changing to my own website for hosting these images because I don't really want direct links to my complete image galleries. Until I've better anti-theft protection, I'm reeling in the amount of images that I post online. So, for now, the images for the final are on my website, in reduced form (max 500 pixels on the widest side.)


I was actually thinking that maybe I have more to update then I thought. .
I have three more paths that I have the photos to add, but can't add yet. Two of them I looked at on Google Maps, and their imagery isn't up-to-date yet, and some of the walkways might not show. The third path I have in mind I have to go re-walk, because I can't tell where I went from Google Maps - parking lots and fences look a lot alike from grainy overhead images, and I want to be 100% certain that all the routes I list on my blog are mapped accurately and on proper trails - either public land, or designated walkways.



I'll do the website review tomorrow.

Final Project Update

I'm working on adding some more of the photos I'd like to include to my website.
I've got one more walking path I'd like to add in right now, and I think I'm going to call that it for the number of paths.

I'm also going to try and get the colors/images/fonts/design of the blog down to a more urban feel instead of the default colors that came with the layout I choose.


(I'll probably do the website review over the weekend, I'm not sure who's website I feel like commenting on since I saw a few that I thought were pretty good.)

AWNM : Ch 9 / Final Reading

Overall, I think A Whole New Mind (Can't seem to underline the title?) is a very interesting book. It presents a very interesting concept and view of the future.

I can't really say that AWNM has changed my view of life or the future, but I do think that its clarified it a good deal. I think that most of what I do I try and do in a unique way. For me, I don't think its as much about doing it better or faster then a computer, but simply doing it better/faster/different than anyone else. As an artist, I need to find ways to make myself stand out from the crowd and be unique. If I can't find a way to do it differently, then whats really the point in doing it at all?

One of the most valuable lessons in AWNM is that you need to put spirit into the things you do. You need to find meaning in what you do, or find a way to bring meaning INTO what you do. You need to find a way to have fun or enjoy the things you do, or at least find a reason to keep doing them if you can't find any way in which you enjoy doing them.

I've found that for a long time there are really simple small things that you can do towards making life better for yourself. Sometimes things can be small (like decorating a cubicle at work.) If you're happier in your work environment, you'll probably work better and faster in it. As a student in highschool, I hated quiet study periods. When its quiet, my brain is free to barage me with thoughts of "i'm sooo bored, " "boy this is stupid", etc, etc. I almost can't work in a quiet study. But give me an ipod, and I can work just fine. Or what about the idea that you don't even have to study in a study period at all? What about the value of talking with friends, laughing, and relieving stress? Can't people see that there might be more value to 45 free minutes then just sitting and trying to study?

I don't really think that this class has changed my working or thinking methods that much over the course of the semester. The only new thing we did this semester (for me) was the stop-motion animation, and I've worked on one before (albeit a little more crude and helping a friend on a final project. . .). I've done a lot of work for "New Media" before. Some of the things we've seen are really cool; I like Neumans idea and the way he displays his video, but there's no way right now that I'd ever get the capitol to be able to afford even one of those screens. . .



I've had a really cool idea using this image (stare at it for about a minute. . .nothing jumps out, I promise)

(Click to view fit to browser window)



I'd love to have a gallery where this image is running on 10-12 different monitors, all synced to play it at the same speed, so as you wander around the gallery, it slowly begins its fade to black and white, and totally toys with peoples minds.

I like a lot of the ideas for New Media, I just don't feel that I've had time to really explore it enough. (By time, I don't mean an hour here or there. . .I mean time as in a year or two. I'm only 19, there's a lot of things I haven't had time to do (yet.) )

Some of the work we've seen has been really cool, but arguably there is just as cool work out there on Youtube, Vimeo, and the rest of the internet by "no-name" people. Maybe that IS the future of New Media, since almost anyone can create it now.


I like some of the ideas that Pink lays out in his book, but I still find it to be a little overly optimistic. Maybe its not optimistic, but a little disconnected. Some of his ideas are great, like the laughing clubs, and the idea that story and narrative can be really powerful. But some of his other ideas just don't seem to fly.

Like GM being an "art company." Its a few years after Pink wrote the book, and I don't see great success from GM at being an art or car company. Here's a short story that might help illustrate my point.


My town recently got Main Street re-done. They did a fairly nice job, concrete sidewalks, with brick inlays about a foot from the curb. And they put in these nice bump-outs for people to cross the street, and the curb cuts have these granite posts on either side of them. Well, it looks sorta nice. . .but they lost about 10 parking spaces. The snowplow drivers hate the bump-outs because they might hit them with their plow blades. I can just imagine the sidewalk plow guy trying to navigate the granite posts sticking out of the sidewalk near every curb cut.

Does it look good? Maybe. But does it function well? No. So who's responsability is it? Should we complain to an designer who has no skill at engineering, or an engineer with design sense who doesn't understand snow removal?

It is very (critically) important that we start thinking about design and function and ways to make people happier in everyday life by laughing using stories, and having empathy for our fellow workers. But we can't forget the L-brain entirely. I mean, what would we do without L-brained thinkers who write the code for Photoshop? Who design the sensors in our digital cameras?

AWNM

I'm reading it right now.
I'd have read it earlier in the week, but it didn't make it into my carry-on for the flight to North Carolina.

Final Project Update - Sunday

Okay, so the final project is coming along quite well.

I still need to do a little bit of formatting on the blog (colors, fonts, images, etc.), but I'm leaving that as one of the later things I'm going to do. Its not going to change the content at all, and I want to have some good, working maps and things online first.

So far, technically, everything is working pretty much just as I expected it to.
I've had no trouble mapping out the walking routes, I've got pinpoints with the photos in them, and I successfully downloaded my walking route from the blog and imported it into Google Earth on my cousins computer, and it worked just fine.

Right now, the first map (in the first post) is the most complete of the set, wit a description of the route, the distance, and most of the photos that will be accompanying it. I was doing the maps and descriptions at the same time, but I decided that it will be better to do them separately. I can get feedback on the walking route descriptions separately from the rest of the blog.

If it isn't clear yet, here's what each blog entry should have :

__________________________________________

Title (Starting point of walking route - end of walking route)
Length of walking route (Feet listed in addition if under one mile)

[MAP]

Description of walking route (where it goes, what you might see, etc.)

Photos (selected blowups from the pinpoints on the maps, titled to match the pinpoints.)


LINK - download the map for Google Earth.

____________________________________________

One of the things that I'm planning on doing in the next day or so is putting some of my photos back online to be used for this project. A while back I cleaned out my photos, and took a number of usefull (for the project) photos offline. I just need to re-upload a few photos. (I expect this should only take about an hour to do.)

Final Project Update

Here's my final project link (I've done one example, I'm going to keep adding more as I go, I can think of at LEAST another 4 walking trails/paths to add in.)
I know the design and color aren't totally urban-y yet, but I should change that this afternoon (Thursday).

I'm currently working on trying to geo-tag the photos, so that the photos actualy show up on the map at the spot I too them from - the Longfelow Bridge photo will have a tag at the brdige on the map, the Pru photo will be tagged from the dock in the river where I shot it from, etc.

http://wanderboston.blogspot.com/

Axiom Gallery

"On The Corner"


"On the Corner" consists of two of the following, mounted evenly on each intersecting wall that form a corner of the gallery.

There is an approxamately 3x5 inch LCD screen (black edge) mounted on a threaded rod approximately 18 inches long. On the end of the threaded rod is a small electric motor that turns the threaded rod. The turning threaded rod causes the LCD screen to travel horizontally (left-right) across the length of the rod. When the screen reaches the end of the rod, it hits a switch with a click sound, and the motor reverses direction, causing the screen to change direction of travel and move to the other end of the threaded rod. There is little/no delay while the screen changes direction. The screen takes a few seconds to travel across from one side to another.

The screen is a very open design, showing some of the electronics behind the display, and giving off a slight green glow from the back. The video feed for the screen comes from an SD car and reader mounted behind the screen, so there is no external video source/player/generator. There are almost no wires going to the screen connecting it to a power source.

On the screen is a video of a streetcorner (in downtown Boston by that Bank of America building that cantalievers over its base and loos like a stiff breeze would tip it over), with cars, trucks, and pedestrians passing in front of the camera. The camera does not move, but stays steady as the traffic goes by. The scene is shot in daylight, maybe around noon, with "average" daylight lighting (no particular shift in color, no really steed shadows, etc.) Every now and then the video changes direction - instead of being played forward, the video stops and starts playing backwards. As the video changes direction, the speed of the cars appears to change too. Sometimes the cars are traveling forward (r-l) while the video screen moves r-l too. Then the video changes, and suddenly the cars are going backwards (l-r) while the screen keeps moving r-l. The more opposite the direction the cars are moving compared to the direction of the screen, the faster they appear to go.

"On the Corner" references other works in the Neumann show because it deals with the idea of what moves in a video. In his videos of flowers on a turntable, the subject is moving (the flowers spin.) In "On the Corner, " the cars move down the road, the camera stays still, and the entire video screen physically moves towards and then away from the corner of the wall.





Andrew Neumanns show at the Axiom gallery is new media because it involves the viewer with the technical aspects of the videos just as much as the visual aspects of the films. A traditional show of video might include some TVs mounted in the walls, showing a video loop over and over again, or possibly a projector showing a film on a wall. Neumann takes the viewer a bit past that point - his screens are small and open, with the circuitry clearly visible behind them. Some of his works have almost no wires at all, and appear to be self-contained TVs just pulling a signal out of thin air. One of his pieces specifically has 5 DVD players sitting in a stack on the floor, with wires openly running up the wall to connect to each small LCD display screen, as a reminder that video today is much easier then it used to be. No longer is the nitty gritty of video hidden away from the audience.


Neumanns work relates to the work we've done in class in many ways. Technologically, his work is mostly digital video, which we've learned to shoot, edit, and upload to the internet in class. Artistically, his work sometimes feels a bit like a storyboard. When you're watching some of his spinning works, like the flowers on a turntable, you almost feel that Neumann recorded the entire scene, then took only the three chunks you saw in the show and cropped them out to make his pieces.

Neumanns work is self-referential in that it challenges our idea of a video or "picture show" to begin with. The title of the exhibit uses picture show to refer to an old-tyme movie, yet only one of Neumanns works is actually shot with film, and then its recorded with a digital camera and displayed with a digital projector. Another one of his works is closeup shots of a film projector running, but again its being shown digitally. The title of Neumanns work also could reference the way that he displays his screens. Their size and positioning is similar to what someone might do when hanging snapshots or small photographs on a wall.




One final note, having read the Globe article, and seen it in person, I like the concept of "Projector w/Projections," but I found the execution to be a little bit lacking. I found the part with the backhoes to be very visually busy, to the point where I was uncomfortable watching it, and with todays video editing software, it reminded me of a video clip of someone exploring the cheezy filter effects in iMovie. . . Maybe I'm just too spoiled by digital video?

Why I embed things using third party aplications

Just a few comments about uploading video to your websites :

1. As my visual language teacher said (pertaining to video) : "Garbage in, Garbage out." (Jane Marsching.)

If you're going to upload video to Youtube, DON'T compress it first - Youtube will do it for you, and the better quality Youtube gets in, the better quality it puts out.


I try NOT to host video on my website, and use Vimeo/Youtube because :



1. It just works.

I used to host video on my website by myself. I got tired of technological morons who didn't have Quicktime whining to me that my stuff didn't play. People very quickly stopped watching. I also had lots of trouble with cross-platform compatibility. Flash-based Youtube and Vimeo should work on just about any browser out there. People are also hesitant to download files they don't trust.



2.Quality and speed.

Good quality videos tend to be larger files. Preloading is nice, but it can really mess up people on dial-up - and a LOT of the US is still on dial-up. Youtube et al. load fast, and offer decent quality.

The way the videos play is also better - they embed well, and can be re-sized quite easily (because they're flash.)

Vimeo can also host things in full HD quality.



3.The future is flash.

Youtube, Vimeo, et. al all play videos from Flash files - why can't WE use flash to post our videos on our websites? (I've been meaning to learn how for a while. . . .)



4.Interconnectivity.

When there's a video on Youtube/Vimeo, it can easily be shared, posted, embedded, linked to, blogged, about, etc. Basically, if its on Youtube, other people can see it and share it, which I believe is a key part of the "new media" concept. If you're posting it online to be seen, then let is be seen in as many ways as possible. If it exists only on your website, its harder to share. (Just look at the number of other works I've embedded in other posts - if those were all on individual artists sites, it might just be a list of links, which looks worse visually, and makes it harder to actually see the video.)

If you don't want to being seen/blogged about outside of your webpage (you want some exclusitivity), you can turn off ratings, comments, and embedding to keep your videos as "yours."



On a final note, for my stuff, right now I'm using Vimeo.
(I don't dislike Youtube, and its nice b/c it ties right in with Blogger.)

I like Vimeo better then youtube because :

1. It's got HD support so I can post HD video.

2. It's embedded video system is better - you can change the size of the embedded video pixel by pixel, from a small 25x25 video, all the way up to embedding something up to 750x750. This means that I can size the embed to fit the design of the page I'm trying to embed it in. (Some of the Youtube videos are too wide to fit the Blogger themes. . . .) And it's not changing the size of the link - if you make it 25pixels wide, a little 25 pixel wide rendition of the video will play.

3. To me, the video conversion quality seems better - maybe it is, maybe it isn't, but I prefer it, so thats what I use.


Vimeo size difference : (Youtube can't do this)

50x34


How Not to Paralel Park (V. 2) from Mark Sylvester on Vimeo.



250x169. . and both play, with only one-click to change the size.


How Not to Paralel Park (V. 2) from Mark Sylvester on Vimeo.




Note to Self :
BEFORE THE 11- Written description of final project/proposal
2-3 paragraphs
scan storyboard
email examples of related studio work

Here's the plan!

View Larger Map


The above map is an example (albeit brief) of what I want to do.
My plan is to create a blog showing all the places that I've gone to walk/photograph.

Each location will have its very own mini-map.

I want each place to have a pushpin marker, a title, a brief description, and a photograph (or video) taken from that particular place. In the accompanying blog post, I'll have more of a written description of what was there, or why I liked it, or maybe even how to get there. Depending on the flexibility of Google Maps, I might even include routes that I've walked on the map itself, possibly with the distance included (so that if you actually decided to visit one of these places, you could have an idea on how far you could/would walk, etc.)

Each place will have its own blog entry, and its very own mini-map. (Depending on the powers of Google Maps, I might try and do a giant map also, just as an example of all the paces I've been, just to show the big picture - one with everything on it.)
All of these maps should be downloadable to Google Earth as well - so you don't need an internet connection to view the trails/locations.

I'm going to use a blog for this because :

1. It's easy to organize content - I can tag posts, its searchable, and things can be embedded in it really easily.

2. Although a Blogger blog structure doesn't have all the flexibility of a normal website, with a little HTML coding thrown in, you can customize a blogger blog to a very high level - I want this project to function well, and I'm willing to take the time to do the extra design work in blogger in exchange for its flexibility.

Final Project Post #1

If you see an embedded map of trolley mueums of PA below, then I"m making progress (ignore the subject, its the only map I've got saved right now.)



View Larger Map

AWNM : Empathy

My random ramblings:

-lugubrious sounds really funny.
----–(adjective) mournful, dismal, or gloomy, esp. in an affected, exaggerated, or unrelieved manner: lugubrious songs of lost love. (Dictionary.com)

Its really interesting reading about doctors and empathy. . .
I had this sorta really grumpy guy draw blood last week. Wasn't very empathetic, but he's the first person (maybe ever?) to actually FIND my vein on the first try, and I didn't feel a thing. Wow.


My actual commentary :

I think that the idea of empathy is really important, but I find it a bit of a stretch to have it as its own chapter. It seems to me that empathy is just a combination of story and symphony - taking the information learned from story, and using the idea of symphony to haromize it with your own personal experiences.

I agree 100% that things would be SO much better if people understood that sometimes shit happens, and it happens to all of us sooner or later, weather we want it to or not.

Marks Stop-Motion How (Not) To

How Not to Paralel Park (V. 2) from Mark Sylvester on Vimeo.

AWNM : Symphony

I was just thinking that its hard to respond to this chapter because there's so much in it, and none of it totally connects, until I realized that in a way that's the point of the chapter - to be successfull, you have to be able to see the big picture. You need to be able to see all the separate parts as a whole, not just as individual parts.

I found it really interesting that people like Richard Branson are (were) slightly dyslexic, and that it helped them succeed. Instead of being disabled, to quote Joe Swanson from Family Guy, he's "differently abled." (If I could find it on Youtube, I'd embed the video clip of it. . . )

I can definately see how how the idea of symphony is important and relivant for today. As companies are moving and spreading out (be in within or outside the US), there are going to be more and more bits, pieces, and parts spread around the world. People need to understand how they work (each part and its sub-parts, understood through story), and then people need to be able to put the whole thing together (symphony), basically understanding that each story needs to have the same ending to acieve success.

AWNM : Story!

Story time!
Yay!

It doesn't surprise me at all that more and more companies are turning to stories and narrative to convey information. I think that the whole idea of narrative can be simplified to the idea that people need to be talked to, not talked at.

Information can be hard to process; People don't retain information when they're bored, or can't see a use for the information later. You have to make people interested in what you're trying to tell/teach them, or at least THINK they're interested in it. If people feel that they're being talked to, involved, respected, etc., then they'll be much more awake and perceptive, and will retain much more of what they need to know. It's much easier to pay attention to a conversation when you fell that you're a part of it, rather then just a bystander. Its easier to listen to a lecture when you can relate to the content.

I think that the ideas behind the concept of "story" might be one of the reasons some people enjoyed my presentation about "Improv Everywhere." I have public speaking experience (museum tour guide), and I tried to do my presentation like a conversation more then a lecture. Sometimes small things like tone of voice, intonation, and tone can make a big difference. (If AWNM is all about right-brain activities, then tone, intonation, etc. should be very important, since those would all be right-brain ideas (they're interpretation of whats said, a function of the right half of the brain.)

Website design update

Common Ties blog

I forgot about this site when we did the "Learning to Love You More" activity.

http://www.commonties.com/about.php


There are a lot of similarities between the two projects, but the "Common Ties" was limited to the 50 words or less, and had to be a textual response. Its also really neat seeing how people illustrate other peoples stories. I like the idea because it allows non-artistic people the chance to have their stories illustrated, and its a prime source for artistic people to get topics to illustrate.

More stop-motion vids

This first one has to be my favorite - it looks really well shot, well edited, and I think the sound design is really good too, and fits in with the theme quite well.

I really like the mirror scene, where Tony is choosing what to wear, and he gets the "showroom" view in each of the three mirrors. A little bit of clever (yet simple) video editing really creates a cool scene.







Batería, piano y Stop Motion

Marks Website Adress and update

Here's my website

http://babel.massart.edu/~msylvester/index.html

I'm having some slight trouble getting it to go live right now, but I should have it up and running properly in no time at all.

//update\\ its really annoying how "index.html" HAS to be lower case, even with the "i..."

My webpage is now online.




This is what the homepage looks like right now :






There are some changes to the original site layout as well.

I've moved the navigation from a top bar to a sidebar, since it looked better graphically, and I added another item to the link bar that squashed it horizontally across the page. The colors have shifted a little bit, I'm using Blue/Black with a whitish text now, since the black/orange looked very bad and was fairly hard to read.

A Whole New Mind

///


Its interesting seeing how people are watching a lot of our jobs head overseas to be done by people who will do it cheaper, and for less money, yet we still complain when our products then don't work as well. It seems that as much as people get caught up in the "modern" world of economy, and business, that there are still some of the same ole' problems that will begin popping up again.

My dad works for an electronics company designing parts for medical equipment. Some of the manufacturing has been moved overseas. There's been loads of problems. The internet might make it easier to have a video conference call. But it doesn't help a 7-8 hour time difference. Sending some of the testing equipment overseas is taking weeks longer then expected getting it to pass through customs and be shipped, etc. Some of the engineers working in the design part of the plant aren't all that fluid in English, and there's been problems understanding their reports. Not all of the engineers are as well trained about the importance of procedure and that one small undocumented change can ruin everything else down the line. Just because it seems cheaper upfront doesn't mean its cheaper down the line.

Maybe we'll be in a position to have better-looking products, but they might not be working as well. Other people may be able to do it faster and cheaper, but not better. Its just like GM being "In the Art Business." As the economy gets tight, people are going to look for cars that are affordable, reliable, and well-designed. GM might be affordable now, but their not particularly well-styled, and their reliability isn't great either. Look at GMs sales now; They're hurting. Badly. People want reliable cars, and Honda and Toyota are easily filling that market. (Hondas are statistically the most reliable cars out there. My family own two of them.) And Hondas and Toyotas have the styling inside and out that people want. GM can't just change the outside of their car and expect their sales to go up.

But changing a cars design isn't just about having an artist or a right-brained person do some drawing on paper. There's a left-brained person somewhere who's gotta create a template for the sheet metal to be rolled, to re-tool the robot that assembles the car, even an engineer who has to look at re-designing something as simple as the little switch that rolls the window up/down.

Honda and Toyota aren't doing better because they're "art" companies. They're doing better because they have good engineers who know how to design each and every aspect of their cars. They know that what their designers say is just as important as what their engineers say. I'd rather see GM start to act like a "Car" company again, and maybe they'd get a product that actually worked and lasted.

This whole left-brain right-brain debate is very silly in a lot of ways. I'm typing this blog post on Google Blogger. Someone very left-brained wrote the code that this page is running right now to type this post. Someone else wrote the code that the internet browser runs on that lets me connect with the program on Googles server to write this blog. As demand for more new media stuff goes up (like web 2.0 and other interactive web elements), so will the demand for left-brained people to write the code that powers it. You can see the same thing with out HTML projects. You used to HAVE to know HTML to do a webpage; Take a blog for example. Years ago, each entry would be a new page, with a new link, etc., etc. These days you can code a beautiful website with Blogger, point-and-click only - no HTML required. It helps to know HTML, but its not required. But getting to this point took thousands upon thousands of lines of other code so that we don't need to do the HTML ourselves anymore.

The need for left-brained people is there, its just behind the scenes more then it has been in the past. Sooner or later we're going to have a situation where all the engineers are outsourced to other countries - then what are all of us right-brained design people supposed to do? How long will we tollerate midnight conference calls discussing minor design changes to a final product? How long until they try and export us right-brained people too?

Reiew of Artist Presentations

After doing my presentation, reading some reviews, and reading some reviews of reviews. . .

One of the presentations that stood out was Tessa's presentation on G.H Hovagimyan. She had a few images that we could see, and the video clips she chose to incorporate into her presentation were clear and to the point in illustrating the concepts she was talking about/describing. Its too bad, but I can't find the website online for "EntertainMe", the laptop/toilet/webcam creation.


For future presentations, I would like to find a better method of presentation. Usually people use Powerpoint for presentations, and some people just had their presentation listed on their blog, because its possible to embed media/videos directly into the blog post. I like powerpoint, but to my knowledge, it can't handle embedded content from Youtube or other similar sites. It would be nice if there was a program that could combine powerpoint and the blog interface to make one smooth presentation, where you can have photos/videos/text, but also have the program load/cue up videos where you want them to start playing, and automatically fullscreen them when played. (Its great being able to imbed videos in Blogger, but they don't fullscreen automatically, and to me, having to point/click/wait for the new window to load isn't visually "clean" enough for a professional presentation.)

Marks Website Sitemap

Sitemap :
Homepage ->

Videos Page
Photo Page
Links Page
Contact information page (fixed target on homepage)

New Media Artist Profile - "Improv Everywhere"

Improv Everywhere is a group of people lead y Charlie Todd, who organize large-scale public participatory events, similar to flash mobs, but with a more mundane and less destructive goals.

Some of their missions have included things like :
-A "Twins" ride on the subway, where pairs of twins sat opposite each other and mimicked each others actions like a living mirror


Human Mirror from ImprovEverywhere on Vimeo.


Or this one, with synchronized swimming in a public fountain


Synchronized Swimming from ImprovEverywhere on Vimeo.



Improv Everywhere says that

"Improv Everywhere is, at its core, about having fun. We’re big believers in “organized fun”. Our missions are a fun source of entertainment for the participants, those who happen to see us live, and those who read this website. We get satisfaction from coming up with an awesome idea and making it come to life. In the process we bring excitement to otherwise unexciting locales and give strangers a story they can tell for the rest of their lives. We’re out to prove that a prank doesn’t have to involve humiliation or embarrassment; it can simply be about making someone laugh, smile, or stop to notice the world around them."

All of Improv Everywhere's projects are "fresh" - most missions aren't announced until 10 days before they're scheduled to be pulled off. Often times, participants aren't fully told what will happen. They'll be told to wear a certain color shirt based on a certain type of music, or do come dressed a certain way - but that's it. A series of missions in their "Mp3 expariment" series have involved people being told to download an Mp3 file onto their ipod or CD player, then showing up at a predetermined location, and all pressing "play" at the same time, then attempting to follow the instructions on the audio file - sometimes jumping or taking the stage in a theater, other times laying down on the grass in different patterns



Mp3 Experiment Four: Time Lapse from ImprovEverywhere on Vimeo.



A Feb. 2005 New York Times article on Improv Eveywhere ("When Checkov Meets Whoopee Cushion") quoted Dr. Harold Takooshian Ph.D., saying that "[Improv Everywhere is] Breaking the unwritten laws of everyday life in the city to get people to appreceate the moment."

Basically, these missions are just to see what happens. Pick a store. Gather agents. Go slo-mo shopping in a New York Home Depot. Do synchronized swimming in a fountain. Get people involved. Make people on the sidewalk stop and wonder whats going on. Get people to take a moment of their day, stop, and enjoy the abnormal for a while.


Interesting/Relivant Links :
Improv Everywhere - Www.ImprovEverywhere.Com
Boston's Urban Prankster group - http://www.misteriosos.org/

Improv everywhere

New Media - Defined

New Media :

-Uses "new" technologies for art purposes - new technology being emerging technology or trends before they become mainstream, or technology and trends designed for one thing, and purposely being used for something else in the name of art (Mass text messaging being used for a flash [art] mob instead of a disaster warning, etc.)

-Tests the boundaries between "art" and "non-art" - such as the people from 3Speed2000 getting on the mainstream media as "transportation pioneers" for the sake of art as actual transit pioneers, whereas (I don't think) they've ever actually been on any other transportation firsts.

-May lean towards being digitally-based, extensively using computers

-May have the potential to be mass-broadcast and displayed "in bulk" - like a video shown and distributed via Youtube, instead of a finished painting where only one physical work is created.



Ala Aspect :


Ignoring the warning, I went to the search page, and any text entered into the search field (with boxes for artist/work checked or not) still lead to a blank page with the "search" tab hidden again. The website doesn't seem to be too happy on Firefox 3.0.1.