Assignment 3- web aesthetics

Art 511 Art & Telecommunications

Assignment 2: Web Aesthetics: Judging Online Web Events

This assignment asks you to explore Web art aesthetics. There are now several international juried art shows focused on Web art, but the criteria of excellence are still in flux. This assignment asks you to refine you own aesthetics. It has 3 parts:

1. Picking the best from Ars Electronica and Rhizome. Everyone in the class is asked to visit the web sites selected from the competitions to be shown in Ars Electronica in either 2006, or 2007 and from the Rhizome commissions competion for years 2005-6 and 2006-7. The links are also available in the Art 511 Web site at Tele.webart.html
Act as though you were a judge in a meta competition. Which 2 web events do you think are the strongest, most interesting, etc. Why? Upload your site links and commentaries via the art 511 Yahoo groups site. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/art511telecom/ (Pick the web art folder in the bookmarks section - Identify which web art show it came from.)

2007 Prix Ars Electronica Digital Community Prizes
http://www.aec.at/en/archives/prix_archive/prix_year_cat.asp?iProjectID=14159&iCategoryID=12420

2006 Prix Ars Electronica Digital Community Prizes
http://www.aec.at/en/archives/prix_archive/prix_year_cat.asp?iProjectID=13638&iCategoryID=12420

2006 Prix Ars Electronica Net Vision Prizes
http://www.aec.at/en/archives/prix_archive/prix_year_cat.asp?iProjectID=13638&iCategoryID=12418

Ars Electronica prior years archive
http://www.aec.at/en/archives/prix_einstieg.asp

2007 Rhizome net commissions
http://rhizome.org/commissions/

2006 Rhizome net commissions
http://rhizome.org/commissions/2006/

2. Picking a strong site from outside traditional art contexts. The Web provides many cool site, best of the web, etc indices. Often these sites push the frontiers of the culture eventhough they are not framed as art. The Yahoo index of these indices is available at Tele.webart.html. Visit two of these "best of the web" indices and find one site that you consider strong, intriguing, challenging.....Upload your site link and commentary (Pick the cool sites folder in bookmarks section - Identify which web index it came from.) For example, Yahoo's index of cool sites etc.

3. Read the telecommunications art chapters (6.1 to 6.4) in my book Information Arts: Intersections of Art, Science, and Technology . (available via secret link)

Consider using the following criteria. Write a short commentary about what you found interesting in your top sites. In your own commentary you can propose other criteria of excellence if not covered by these.

1. Visual Appeal & Effectiveness

coherence, clarity, balance, innovation

2. Information Design & Navigation

interface & navigation
information structure
orchestration of hypermedia
Use of outside information sources

3. Meeting the challenge of technology

responding to user circumstances - bandwidth sensitivity, platforms, browser sensitivity
Responding to new opportunities - online communities, interactive forms & imagmaps, new media capabilities

4. Cultural context of the Web

Cross cultural design
How does it relate to other media, expand traditional genres
How does it respond to larger social forces
Innovation- what new possibilites does it create

This page is part of Art 511 New Communications Technologies in the Conceptual/Information Arts Program. It was prepared by Professor Stephen Wilson..