projects thus far

Self Portrait

Project II

good influence

My Boyfriend Came Back From the War
Olia Lialina, 1996




Young Hae Chang Heavy Industries
Korea Web Art Festival 2001

These two pieces have influenced Project II. I really liked the idea of frames inside of frames that Olia Lialina used in 'My Boyfriend Came Back From the War.' I didn't take it quite as far as she did, but it did influence my project. The website being black and white is also an influence on my project because I like the way things just appear out of the darkness.
Also Young Hae Chang Heavy Industries' 'Korea Web Art Festival' had a great influence on my project. I like the way words flash on the screen and disappear. I used this component in my project in a couple of different places. It looks simple but it works for the project. The Korea Web Art Festival piece is user interactive without being interactive because Young Hae Chang uses words to interact with the user. The words draw them in because the piece is talking to them. I am also incorporating this aspect into my project with a flash piece that is talking specifically to the viewer.

Funk

Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries collaboration with Candy Factory
Korea Web Art Festival, 2001

"It's pretty obvious that the "tone" or "voice" of Internet literature is more distant and difficult to "locate" than traditional writing. Mere book packaging tells a lot about the book and the author; browser packaging is generic. Distance, homelessness, anonymity, and insignificance are all part of the Internet literary voice, and we welcome them." - Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries

This piece by Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries in collaboration with Candy Factory is titled Funk. It was done to promote the first ever Korea Web Art Festival in 2001. The viewer is confronted with flashing words and upbeat music. The flashing words [written in both English and Korean] are in conjunction with the music. During the flash presentation, the names of the artists participating in the festival flash across the screen. Other words flash across the screen asking the viewer to get up and dance, telling them they are beautiful and that they are not alone. After the 'Funk' you are taken to the Korea Web Art Festival website for 2001 and you see the words "Alone Together" at the bottom of the screen; these words are also shown many times in "Funk."


"Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries combines text with jazz to creat Flash pieces on its web site, http://www.yhchang.com. It's a simple technique, one that shuns interactivity, graphics, photos, illustrations, banners, colors, and all but the Monaco font, while at the same time appears to cut across the lines separating digital animation, motion graphics, experiemental video, and electronic poetry. To Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries, though, it's Web art."

Communication Creates Conflict

Communication Creates Conflict
Heath Bunting
1995

Communication Creates Conflict starts out with a page that contains a poem of sorts about communication. Here is an excerpt:

peace and harmony vs destraction to destruction.
language from - mortality inspired fear,
creates desire for - unification via language.
'it good to talk' say british telecom,
but is futile as peace is expressionless;
attempted expression is conflict.

Within the writing there are pieces of words that are hyper linked to a different page. On each page there is a way to 'communicate.' For instance, there is a page called #leaflet. Through this page you can create a leaflet that people will give out at large stations in Tokyo because there are always people hanging around handing out leaflets in Tokyo. Tokyo seems to be the location of choice in this project. However, on one page you can fill out the form to send the author a postcard, yet another means of communication. Heath Bunting chose to represent Tokyo through its many means of communication. Such as leaflets, emails, letters, etc. You use Bunting's website to communicate with Tokyo. "Through the use of recycled software, this works allows the participant to influence a broad range of communications media from the Internet, including the fax, postal mail, e-mail, and the Street. "

A Visitor's Guide to London

A Visitor's Guide to London
Heath Bunting, 1995

A Visitor's Guide to London was created by Heath Bunting in 1995. The author chose to represent places around London through pictures. The viewer is able to choose between directions such as north, south, east, and west. Also, the viewer could choose a place from a map. The website engages the user, who is ultimately in control of where they end up. The pictures themselves are in black and white and kind of grainy. So the viewer may not always be certain of their location.

"In Visitors' Guide to London, initially a HyperCard project and then put on the Net, he offers a way of looking at London quite different from the usual tourist clichés. Bunting employs low-resolution black-and-white images with no gray-scales, along with a very simple navigational system. The visitor moves around the city by clicking on icons for north, northeast, east, etc., on a map of the Underground. From the map he or she can access any stations, but only to find banal photographs which Bunting has taken there at the surface. He thus accomplishes what he himself calls “the already out-of-date psycho-geographical tour of London, ideal for foreign visitors, with over 250 sites of anti-historical value, incomplete, without instructions, now available for all (the rich) on the World Wide Web.”

Anyone could find a better visitor's guide to London, but it would be in a book, not on the web. Bunting gives the viewer something to interact with, even if the pictures are low quality. Interactivity is a characteristic that correlates with the internet. The viewer clicks and is immediately transported to another place in London. You certainly can't get that from a book.