Web Designers

David Desandro is a designer working at Twitter, currently based in Brooklyn. His personal website appears very simple at first glance, with a solid orange background, one identifiable font with some variation in color, italic/bold, and size; he continues the theme of simplicity with a short statement, "Being creative and making things keeps me happy". The text, multiple titles like, "Projects", "Writing", "Web Presence", are aligned in a single row, and the creativity of his work starts to show through on the links underneath: each link is a rollover gif with a moving rainbow color for the font. I really like this minimal layout with small, fun, surprises coded into the space.

His projects are very space-layout heavy, organizational, and fun. In a lot of his projects, links and their content are organized into boxes that are sort of haphazardly stacked into columns. This design has a very archival feeling to it, where the user can see a large portion of content at once while being able to choose to go further into a single piece. Draggability is really interesting, as Desandro explains how he made the program and gives examples for each step with that part of the design. It's incredibly interactive, and I'd love to know how it could be used to create a more complex, puzzle-based, website.

Identify Yourself - Section Analysis

In the section, "The Intended Audience", South wrote about the way in which published diary/blog content on the internet will ultimately be found by someone, but the intended audience for the content on these kinds of platforms are simply ourselves. We begin with a thought, we write it out to whatever extent we want to deliberate on, we post it, and leave it. Even on a public website, the action was taken for ourselves, first. The next consumers are whoever follow or subscribe to the blog, and they sometimes act as a filter to how we write, in styles of writing and in the views we take.

South mentions Livejournal and describes it as an old website thats collected teen angst and victory, and of her old blog she kept romantic letters archived in. This immediately made me think of my first blog(s), which were similar, in that they started as diaries. The only one I still use has evolved past personal, written, posts, and is now a sort of generator for other blogs' content; I just process information and pass it on. However, there isn't much stopping someone from just going back to when it was a diary, and I can still search for my deleted blog's title on Google and old content comes up.

To connect this with identity, it's rather like looking into a time machine and seeing my previous versions of myself. Though it's incredibly public, it was a safe space for me to express the troubles I found myself in and the self-discoveries I made, in growing up. This kind of self-reflection on identity is pretty important, because once I'm past the embarrassment of my younger self, I can tell how I've grown and why. The idea that someone might see that, too, gives me hope that they might learn from my past.

Artist Post

Tatiana Plakhova is a Russian artist who has worked with BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Paramount, Playboy, and HP, and who first studied psychology before pursuing a degree and profession in design. Her works are very etherial and dreamlike, most often with stars or repeated patterns; she describes her work as "infographic abstracts". To Plakhova, everything people see comes from pre-registered biological, mathematical, cultural, or geographic context, and she works to show them through "mathematical simplicity and harmony". Her work contains fractal images, perfect eliptical pathways, and gridlines in any number of point perspectives.

In looking through Plakhova's portfolios, I feel like I've seen similar pieces in maths and science textbooks, or in National Geographic or science magazines or articles, or anything related to the subjects. I realized that this is what she meant by infographic, and that even though the images do not get into depth about the concepts, they visually describe the title or theme through a progression of time and movement. The viewer gets the general idea of a cell section or orbital mechanics, and as they continue through the individual galleries, the pieces get more abstracted and the cells they just looked at have formed a honeycomb network that may or may not be the combination of all cells or a further microscopic image of just one.

One series I found outstanding is Light Beyond Sound, which begins with vector-like pathways in a space created by background perspective lines. It's ridiculously detailed, with small (starry)(pinpointed) marks on the pathways and points of expansion. The "light" is really emphasized in the beginning, but gets pushed away from the viewer later, where the possible universe the viewer was seeing is isolated, and is showing its movements, sections, changes, and eventually is shown as a part of a more massive network of physics. Cleverly, the very clearly mathematical designs resemble chandeliers and flames.

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http://www.complexitygraphics.com/

portraits (???)

Artist Post - Alberto Seveso

Alberto Seveso is a freelance illustrator who works with Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator to create ethereal, stunning portrait images. Many of his pieces seem to be used as title pages for articles, books, and as advertisements. His preferred style began with a fascination for skate deck graphics and metal band cd covers, and from this grew a career in illustration.

A common theme in his work is liquidity, and maybe from that, transformation. The subjects, whether specific or not, become translucent, and are bursting metaphorically with flowers, organic forms, flat forms of color, and often colored smokes. Individuals are made up of many parts that aren't visible to the outside, and I feel that Seveso's art kind of reflects the personal interior of his subjects. Some are soft, or intense, or focused on their own passion.

My reaction is pretty simple, just in that I think Seveso's work is beautiful, and consistently suggesting creativity and personality.

mashup

Technology Log

8:30 - cell phone alarm clock
8:48 - checked time
8:49 - used internet
9:20- checked texts
9:35 - checked time
10:30
:32
:45
:50
:59
11:37 - checked time
11:49 - responded to text, used internet through phone
3:40 - check phone
3:44 - check phone
4:02 - check phone
4:30 - check phone
5:05 - respond to text
5:14 - internet through laptop
5:50 - used pages program to write assignment
6:30 - texted

Scansa Stark

the birds were circling, but they knew not why and for how long
hahahahahahaahahaha

Artist Review 1

Moths, Joseph Scheer

Scheer is a professor of Printmaking at Alfred University in Alfred, New York. His moth scan series began as collages with bugs as a component of the entire piece, and as he continued his work became solely focused on the moth, alone on a blank screen. In his statement he expresses respect and adoration for nature, his biophilia an emotional connection to the world we inhabit.

My initial impression of the moth scans shown in the Christiane Paul article was that these were imitating old collections of moths or butterflies, and I feel that this is probably a fairly universal reaction.   Moths really aren't seen in nature with their wings unfolded or with their proboscises unwound, and the flat white background kind of repeats this scientific, observative, aesthetic. But with the knowledge that Scheer scanned the moths and the final piece is not the moth on display, or a field sketch for scientific use, but an image of a moth, the moths' physical, visible features are the actual purpose of the piece.

Scheer developed a unique scanner for the moths he collected from outside his office and his friends' gardens at night. The amount of data collected was massive, enough so that only two moth scans could be fit on one compact disc. Scans can be zoomed in over 2,000 times, and still be crystal clear, so its kind of a testament to how once we observed and collected data with microscopes and the bare eye, but now there is no need to keep a moth collection, the image and all the data you'd need is available through technology.

Personally, I'd like to have prints of these for decoration, but I think scanning as a medium for scientific study could be a way to publicize (online) studies and create a more easily accessed base of knowledge for the public eye.