Art 412 Conceptual/ Information Arts - Intro to Art & Technology

Assignment 2:  Hypermedia - Everyday object (newspaper) as artistic source

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1. Anything can be an art focus:  pick an item from the newspaper

Search the newspaper for items to which you would not usually pay much attention. Search for items to which you think you can add unusual perspectives These can be news items, advertising, images ... anything in the newspaper. For this assignment focus on the newspaper from Sunday, xx,xx. Pick specific items as a focus, not large sweeping themes - for example, a particular quote, event, diagram, advertising claim etc., not "the middle east" or "the budget" in general..

Project activities:

• Be ready to talk in class about 3 items that you considered as a possible focus for the assignment.
• Pick one for a focus. (It is to serve only as a jumping off point - you can choose to concentrate on its meaning in its original context or to transform its meaning as you wish.)

2. Hypermedia Design - Navigation - Interactivity- Non-linearity - Reader as author

Hypermedia can vary any of the constituents of normal media.  For example, in narratives it can offer variations in plot lines or views of the events from the perspective of different characters involved.  It can offer different sound or image experiences based on the virtual position chosen by the viewer.  It can offer different interpretive perspectives customized for different audiences - eg male and female viewers or people with different political perspectives see a slightly different event.

Read the articles

Stephen Wilson The Aesthetics and Practice of Designing Interactive Computer Events   http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~swilson/papers/interactive2.html
George Landow   The Definition of Hypertext and Its History as a Concept
Erkki Huhtamo - Seven Ways of Misunderstanding Interactive Art
Wiki article on Death of the Author with links
Pick at least one other article from the artlinks text links (section on the hypermedia/interactivty.)  http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~infoarts/links/wilson.artlinks.texts.html

Visit the suggested sites:

Mark Amerika  Grammatron
My Body, A Wunderkammer -  Shelley Jackson    http://www.altx.com/thebody/
Pick at least one other artist site from the artlinks artists links  (working with hypertext) http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~infoarts/links/wilson.artlinks.texts.html

Project activities:

This assignment asks you to create a mini-study of the concept of Hypermedia.  Incorporating (in some way) the item you picked from the newspaper  (and optionally the body part focus), you are asked to create a short set of sequences that vary depending on choices made by the viewer.  You are asked to create a work that is radically different based on user choices.  Two people who have visited your event and have chosen different opitons should feel like they have had very different experiences when they discuss it.  Here are the steps:

• 1.  Pick a focus for variation.  It could be the items mentioned above - plot, character, visual point of view, audience characteristic - or anything else you find interesting.  Hypermedia authors note that the treatment of the variation can become a key artistic focus.  For example, how can you construct a plot where multiple paths make sense? or what can you reveal about human differences that becomes clearer by offering different perspectives on the same event?
• 2.  Plan your structure of sequences:  Hypermedia can quickly get complex.  For example a small plot with 3 variations at each of 3 choice points could require you to create 27 unique plots. (3 x 3,x 3).  Map out your navigational structure.  To keep things simple, this exercise should be considered a prototype study.  Your event should consist of no more than 7 sequences.   It is fine is some options are not developed.
• 3.  Navigational design:  In Hypermedia you must offer the viewer ways to make choices and ways to keep track of where they are.  These should be artistically integrated into your event.  Here are some of the classic design considerations
• How do viewers know what choices they can make? What kind of map/contents/control screen do you provide? What visual metaphor you employ? (Ideally it would visually and conceptually related to the experiences that follow).
• How do you customize the sequence for your audience? What assumptions do you make about what those particular kinds of people will want or need?
• What method of movement through the sequence do you use? What method for returning to the original screen? What convention for letting them know where they are?
• What is the artistic/visual feel of the whole experience? You have open all the strategies of contemporary art - for example, representation, surrealism, abstraction, deconstruction.

3. Design Constraints - Technical Requirements

•  Use Director's system of markers and simple Lingo navigational commands to orchestrate the event. Divide your composition into discrete segments. Start each with a named marker. Close the end of each segment with a lingo command to loop back to the beginning of that segment. Create visual link controllers in each segment to allow the person to go to the next subevent
• For the sake of time, this must be viewed as a study for a larger work.  You are limited to using only 7 sequences.  You can map those sequences to choices in any way you want.   Be clear what navigational model you are using to the extent that you can diagram it.  Be prepared to submit a map of your navigational structure.  It will be acceptable if some of the options at choice points are not fully elaborated.
•  Create a metaphor such that exploration of the event by mouse movement causes the movie to move to different sections. Use mouseEnter, mouseWithin and mouseLeave message handlers. Do not use Director's built in automatic behaviors.  Use images as navigational elements - not Director's preshaped buttons.
•  Select one family of visual metaphors that pervades the whole event - something relating to the newspaper item and/or body part you have selected. Related images should appear in both variations of the event.
• The whole event must use no more than 6 images and 10 text phrases. At lease one of the images must be scanned from the newspaper. Other images can be drawn or scanned from anywhere. At least 1 of the text segments must be in large text (48 points or larger).
• Use some animation in the segments to help convey your treatment. Constrain your composition to a 640 x 480 stage size.
• The challenge of constrained image/text in hypermedia. Even though you may reuse some of the same images and text in the segments, your different viewers should have a very different experience - partially determined by the sequence paths you create.

4. The Body (optional focus)

1.  Our images of our bodies are heavily mediated - for example, influenced by media representations and advertising.  Digital technology allows easy modification and synthesis of body images
2.  Our notions of gender are becoming fluid - historical assumptions are being challenged - classic male hegemony and female as object are suspect - relationships between sex, gender, and identity are subject to technological intervention
3.  Posthuman theorists question the historical limitations of the body.  New medical, bionic, genetic, and robotic technologies suggest a very different future in which body functions are expanded in unprecedented ways.

Critical Art Ensemble - Utopian PromisesóNet Realities  (http://www.critical-art.net/books/flesh/flesh7.pdf)
Stephen Wilson  - Excerpts from Information Arts focused on the body (chapter 2.5 and 7.1 theory section) (http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~swilson/papers/wilson.body.infoarts.html)
Pick at least one other article from the artlinks text links (section on the body.)  http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~infoarts/links/wilson.artlinks.texts.html

Stelarc (projects on the modified body)  http://www.stelarc.va.com.au/
Eduardo Kac  (Transgenetic Art) http://www.ekac.org/
Victoria Vesna  (Bodies Incorporated)  http://www.bodiesinc.ucla.edu/
Pick at least one other artist site from the artlinks artists links  (working theoretically on the body) http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~infoarts/links/wilson.artlinks.texts.html

• Pick one specific part of the body.  Use it as an organizing conceptual and/or visual component in your assignment.  We will build a master hypermedia index for all projects organized around parts of the body.
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