Group items tagged

One of several excellent online collections of Data Visualization endeavors. Browse the many different categories, keywords, authors and approaches to comprehending 'big data'. Along with aesthetic variation along the metaphorical to modernist continuum, there are many new media trends covered. Those of you exploring social media in your final research paper may well find this useful reference, too! Visual Complexity. Last updated February 19, 2014. www.visualcomplexity.com/vc. Accessed April 6, 2014

This website catalogs the growing trend of utilizing animated infographics to convey information. Not only is it becoming necessary to continuously filter the great amounts of data we experience into slick new ways of perceiving, a database that houses these new tools of perception becomes useful. Of particular interest to me is the combination of database with social media on vizualizing.org - the site hosts contests and challenges to better suss out interesting new designs in organizing information.

Powell's website has gone through a number of changes over the years, one of the most noticed changes is that their icon, remaining in the upper-left corner, has changed multiple times since 1998. The date of the website I posted is from 2000, and I think it fits the time of the technology available. This site does look "old", which is why I think all of these sites have been entertaining to revisit. It's set up in a fairly simple construct, there is nothing flashy or attention-grabbing about the text font. There's a strip of colored tabs at the top of the screen that I feel like I've seen many times before, like on a library or a middle school website. Websites now seem to have more engaging elements whether is motion graphics, or the design is just more complicated and intriguing. This site is pretty text heavy; there are minimal graphics so it just looks like a wall of black text, there isn't a lot that is keeping me interested. Images are small and don't offer visual representation of the store. The text is all in slightly different sized Times New Roman, even in the links or the pages as I'm navigating around the site. I haven't found any sound or multimedia. Toward the bottom of the page there is an option for "free stuff" for either a mac or a pc. The Powell's Bookstore name and icon remain in the same place on the site.

This is an intriguing site for its connection locally to Portland and I think also of the struggles of so many "brick-and-mortar" bookstores in face of online bookselling. More particular as a case study for media archeology, the lackluster design elements of this artifact, as you point out, a (constrained) aesthetic familiar to many early websites --- the 'bells and whistles' arrving via text centric gimmicks--- contests and 'free stuff', rather than visual appeals.

This animated video by designer Melih Bilgil provides a concise, relatively easy to understand motion graphic animation about the Internet's infrastructure. Key technological inventions are detailed with a series of highly legible icons that Bilgil developed while studying Communication Design. Faced with inherently technical and sometimes challenging descriptions of various networking protocols and systems, this narrated visualization is an effective supplement to the histories relayed in the Cybernetic Counterculture texts. Melih Bilgil. "History of the Internet" Vimeo posted 2009. https://vimeo.com/2696386 Accessed February 11, 2014

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2GRAVpbDds Somewhat related

Radical Software was created in the 1970s by Beryle Korot, Phyllis Gershuny, and Ira Shneider to create a network of video sharing. This site has PDF files of the Eleven issues published and distributed by Radical software between the years 1970 and 1974. The website also provides the history of The Raindance Corporation which was created in 1969 by a radical media activist and artist by the name of Frank Gillette. The general Idea behind Raindance Corporation was to created a collection of works and ideas for "implementing communication tools in the project for social change." The website also discusses in detail the intent of Radical Software and fight towards creating a world of free and accessible information.

thanks, this is an excellent example of primary source document, the actual artifact providing visual detail of its historical context that escapes easy translation. This site is equipped with a well organized search and browse function, too!

We can see that this website looks like it dates from the late 90s/early 2000s and targets a younger audience due to the style of text used in the header (the 3-D text and the star to dot the 'i') and the overall basic layout that makes use of a more generic type face. All of the information that can be found on the site is hyperlinked on the left side of the page, and when one hovers over each link a colored, square icon spells out the name of the link letter by letter. Compared to contemporary websites, this effect seems to be more of a glitch than a cool, new use of technology. Also to note are some of the terms used throughout the site, including "cool stuff" being listed as the first hyperlink in the left column of the site, as well as the small add for sweet16.com found in the center of the page. A less sophisticated typeface is used in this ad and we see a flower in place of a '.' between sweet16 and com. It is also described as 'The freshest place to party!'. There's only one picture on the right hand side of the text, of a younger Britney Spears in a lace up leather crop top (much different than the fashion style she wears today) and there's a tie dye like pattern in the background of the website that further emotes the style of the late 90s and early 2000s.

Thanks for the thoughtful analysis of the design elements --- as you describe, they seem aligned with visual trends of their recent historical context and also point towards a particular audience. The presence of ads is often a helpful hint when decoding the target audience of a website. It's interesting to me, as well, that this early website is identified as Britney's own "welcome to my official website," the use of language implies she is responsible directly for the content. ---more recently I suppose its implied that she's professional enough, or more of a brand than person, to rely on that sort of gimmick to connect with her audience (?)

I found this a little unusual and not exactly what I was expecting for part of my Meta-Data links. But I thought it was relative and intriguing. The reading section titled "Half-Inch Tape Network" discussed the interaction between guerrilla tape and media and commercial cable programs. Points of interest surfaced about the development from the first television to cable to video cassettes and the underground distribution of tapes. "The half-inch tape network has strong similarities to the shape and ambitions of the Internet, which was being developed at that same time, and one might easily see the similarities between the 'alternative channels' created by the half-inch tape network and websites like YouTube" (15 of 20). This research lead me to find the launch of the VHS mode permitted to some YouTube videos in honor of the video cassette's 57th birthday. In the article(s) provided, each mentions something about the warping of visuals in the video, white flecks and a kind of buzzing that is featured. I have also provided a link to an example of the VHS mode on a YouTube video. Prigg, Mark. Mail Online, "Google reveals new 'VHS mode' for YouTube as video tape celebrates 57th birthday." Last modified April 16, 2013. Accessed February 5, 2014. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2309482/Google-reveals-new-VHS-mode-YouTube-video-tape-celebrates-57th-birthday.html. LINK FOR VIDEO EXAMPLE: http://youtu.be/wbesAd3YxaE?t=38s LINK FOR ANOTHER WEBSITE'S INFO: http://techcrunch.com/2013/04/15/youtube-adds-tape-mode-to-select-videos-in-celebration-of-video-casette-recorders-57th-birthday/

As mentioned in Siva Vaidhyanathan's reading portion "Open Source as Culture/ Culture as Open Source", computer scientist Richard Stallman began developing the pursuit of the Free Software Foundation. During the 1970s and 1980s, Stallman was working for MIT, he "set out to establish" this foundation that would help "prove that good tools and technologies could emerge from a community of concerned creators" (26). The link I provided is for the "about" section on the Free Software Foundation's current website. I thought this might help provide more insight about the program and offer information regarding their goals and work to keep the public free and in charge of their own computer monitoring. Free Software Foundation, Inc., "Free Software Foundation: About." Last modified 2014. Accessed February 5, 2014. https://www.fsf.org/about/.

Thanks for building out a link to this site, there's a lot of rich connections that continue to be relevant, perhaps more recognizably today with copyright concerns surrounding audio and visual media.

This is an advertisement for the SAGE computer system, one of key military-academic-industrial research endeavors discussed in the Fred Turner reading. The advertisement provides a good audio-visual elaboration of the inter-dependent aspects of a cybernetic system. There are also various technological artifacts present, including light guns and reactive screens. "IBM SAGE Computer AD, 1960" Posted by chiklit Dec. 29, 2009. Accessed February 6, 2014

This 5 minute edit of a digital ethnographic study by Michael Wesch is an excellent visual introduction to particular techno-social affordances and constraints of the Internet, echoing some ideas from lecture about hypertext and is useful to understanding the broader technical behind-the-scenes through the first decade of internet--- a helpful supplement to thinking about net.art and other forms of production online "The Machine is Us/ing Us (Final Version)" Youtube video, 4:34. Posted by Michael Wesch, March 8, 2007. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLlGopyXT_g

One of those sort of chintzy web-novel thingies. It involves the sordid internal dialogue of a mother and "the baby" as she, the mother, ambulates about her apartment performing various domestic type tasks. The structural system of little footnote-y links that elaborate little bits of the main body of the story remind me of reading Infinite Jest. Most entertainingly the woman refers to her baby as "the baby" and "the baby" is pretty much more interesting than her. It seems, based upon my chosen links, that net.art of the visual variety has very limited appeal to me. In fact I have decided that it is rather fucking obnoxious and that people should refrain from producing any more of it. Story/writing/narative/shit-poetry based stuff is OK I guess.

This article written by John Crabb is about the sixth senses, hyper-space, of corse the fourth dimension. The article is a nice parallel to the Meta Reality reading because is discusses C.H. Hiltion and sources the The Fourth Dimension and Non-Euclidean Geometry in Modern Art. The article explains the hows the ideas of the fourth dimension are not only associated with visual are, but also liturater. Giving examples of authors such as HP Lovecraft, and Lewis Carroll incorporating the ideas of the fourth dimension into their work. Crabb, John . "Notes on the Fourth Dimension | HiLobrow." HiLobrow RSS. http://hilobrow.com/2012/05/24/notes-on-the-fourth-dimension/

This audio-visual overview of the Internet of Things was published by IBM's Social Media cohorts in 2010. Combining voice-over and well crafted, legible motion graphics, it provides a summary of the underlying concepts of the Internet of Things. In 2004, when Bruce Sterling was first writing about spimes, he mentions the Internet of Things, a then emergent infrastructure linked to build out of RFID enabled gizmos, and eventually, perhaps, spimes. "The Internet of Things" posted by IBMSocialMedia on March 15, 2010. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfEbMV295Kk Accessed March 21, 2014