My websites main purpose is to showcase my academic and personal works. One of the goals for my site is to incorporate my personal style and aesthetic into my blog posts and pages. I am from Panama, a tropical country where bright and warm colors are predominant. Through my photography I try to convey strong visual energy using bright and saturated colors. Most visual elements found on my site are my own photographs and renderings. There are a couple of artists and genres that have inspired me, and combining them together I aim to create my own style. For example, Piet Mondrian a Dutch painter that is very well known for creating complex compositions based off of basic shapes, primary colors, and flattened forms. Similar to Mondrian, I am attracted to the basic vertical and horizontal elements of design, and find them in architectural structures in order to create a dynamic balance in each composition. His designs mirror the concept of using simplicity to create something complex, reinforcing the idea that something magnificent can come from something plain. Similarly, I aim to model my website based on these principles. Another genre that inspires me is glitch art, which is art made from technology. I am very interested in the study of innovations and modernity, and glitch art is able to create something powerful from the errors that stem from technology. It emerges from inaccuracies and in the least expected ways comes to life and is rendered by an abstract vision. Another artwork that has inspired me is Coldplay’s music video “Up and Up.” The 3-minute video is a collage, combining several different clips that do not have much in common but put together are able to transmit a very strong message. What I love about the video is the immense amount of creativity that took into creating a sequence of events pulled from the past, present and future in order to create a time and space of its own. I added a cover photo to each page page on my site. The picture I chose for the Digital Media and Culture page is a collage I made from an Image I took of buildings. I deconstructed the image and cropped parts of the buildings, mixing textures and colors. I thought this image was appropriate because it represents a fast past environment that resembles many discussions we have in class regarding technology and the every changing world we live in. The collage has images of road signs that give contradicting directions. There are multiple "one way" signs that do not actually indicate a direction, and stop signs intertwined within the blocks of texture. These symbols reflect our current political environment, which is tumultuous, confusing, and multidirectional. The paged called Media Gallery exhibits some of my digital collages. I decided to use a slideshow format to showcase the images, because it allows the pictures to be displayed individually giving each one a space of its own given most of the images are very busy and visually complex. A common pattern I use in most of my digital collages is a kaleidoscopic effect, creating a distorted space which abstracts and disclaims objects realistic properties. The image I chose for the home page of my site is a collage I made out of lights. I wanted the first page people would see on my website to be bright and call the reader in. On the bottom of my home page I included icons that link to my photography social media platforms, in order for the reader to get more information on my work. This is how my website looked before:
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We live in a world where we are constantly connected and online. We are expected to answer our texts, emails, calls, snaps, etc. If we don’t it is automatically assumed that something might be wrong, because the idea of purposely not being connected is not even an option. There is also a big difference between social channels. One might always be online, but not active in every single channel. Always being online creates an ecosystem of constant sharing and connectivity.
Many like to assume we are addicted to technology; however, it is not technology we are hooked on but what it offers us. Constant connection and information about everything and anything. We are curious beings and knowing we have access to infinite amount of information and content stimulates our desire to always be connected. Many might say that the increase use of technology has decreased human interactions, but the basis of our passion towards being connected stems from our human instinct of depending on other people and the need for approval and validity. Social media gives us immediate gratification and satisfaction. Studies show that our brain lets out dopamine whenever we get likes on a post which produces instant gratification. After being immersed in the world of social media it is very hard to go back to not being connected. Checking our email, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or Snapchat has become a chore, we feel a need to always be in the know and cannot have a day pass without indulging from these platforms. The key to managing a life that revolves around being connected and online is having a balance. It is unrealistic to say that we should stop depending on the internet, because it is an increasing trend and there is no point in going against the current. Nonetheless, it is crucial to maintain a balance in order to keep mental sanity. It can get very stressful having to keep up with everything that is going on online, and knowing when to clock out is very important. Many may say that due to technology we are losing focus, attention span, and interest to learn, because information is so easy to access and obtain. However, knowing how to access and handle information has become more important than memorizing it. We are moving towards an information based economy, where data holds immense value and power. What is web 2.0 by O'Reilly talks about the rise of the Web 2.0 and its most successful pioneers. Google set the standard for the Web 2.0. It began as a web application service that constantly was being improved and updated. Google works as a specialized database, unlike Netscape that did not require database management. Double click was another one of the first software’s of the internet era. However, its mistake was to align its goals with the 90’s notions of the internet. It saw the internet as a place to publish rather than to participate, and valued advertisers rather than users. Google on the other hand saw another vision for the internet, it gave importance to many small websites instead of the few most important ones. It also saw the need for advertisers and created banners on the sides of the website for ad placement. Ebay is another example of a company that understood the internet’s vision for success. It focused on small transactions between individuals and behaved as an intermediary. Bit Torrent was an innovator in the p2p movement, that aimed to decentralize the internet. They viewed clients as servers, therefore the most frequently downloaded files became the fastest to download as well. The more people utilized the service the better it would get, creating an inherit ethic of collaboration. The main thing that most of the greatest companies of the Web 2.0 have in common is their reliance on engagement and organic marketing. Wikipedia innovated the concept that any individual could create and any other individual could edit that same content. The basis of this notion relied on trust and ethics of web collaboration and integrity. The concept of “tagging” was ideated by sites like flicker. A tag served the purpose of associating content with other content on the web. Similarly, how hyperlinks work, but a tag would enable you to easily search for relevant topics and centralized information. Amazon, a platform where you can easily buy anything, gained popularity because of its ability to rank, review and rate products. Not only were the products displayed in real time but also displayed by flow. Google’s success was also due to its ability to provide the user with a pleasant experience while web browsing. It displayed web pages by popularity and relevance, and made it easy and simple to find what you were looking for on the web. Janet Murray talks about four properties that are representative of digital artifacts; which are procedural, participatory, spatial and encyclopedic. The objective in creating the best digital artifact possible is accomplished by successfully combining and using these four affordances. I will be using these four affordances of the digital medium in order to compare and contrast Facebook and Snapchat. Facebook is a social media platform that has revolutionized communication and transformed the way we consume and interpret information. Its main goal is to connect people from all over the world and create a closer digital community. Facebook was created by Mark Zuckerberg and initially intended to just be a social platform for university students. It quickly gained popularity and in 2005 it began to spread worldwide. Snapchat is also a social media platform, but instead of focusing on preserving memories its uniqueness came from the concept of disappearing memories. Snapchat enables users to send and receive images they can only view for a maximum of 10 seconds. Snapchat recognized the dominant social media platforms that took up most of the market, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. However, they all mainly focused on documenting photos, videos and texts. Snapchat, on the other hand, went towards the opposite direction. It based itself on the real life experience of viewing an image, where you would only see it once and not see it again. A procedural medium is a combination of abstract behaviors. Algorithms are the abstract set of guidelines and instructions programed into the computer system that simulate life like behaviors. “The more possibilities it encompasses the more powerful and widely useful it will be” – Murray. In other words, the more lines of code and more possible outcomes to a problem the more complex the system is. Facebook is a procedural medium because it is composed of algorithms, which are an abstract set of guidelines and instructions programed into the system. From the launch of Facebook, it has undergone many system updates and added more and more features. It is made up of a very complex set of codes that allow for several features to function. Facebooks initial main qualities were the ability to connect with friends, share photos, and browse through a timeline. Now a days Facebook has become the center of our generations social life. It is the medium we use to find out about events, get updated with the latest’s news, and communicate with friends. Snapchat also has procedural qualities; however, they are less complex as those of Facebook. One of Snapchats main hooks was its simplicity and specific functionality. Unlike Facebook that has endless amounts of functions and features, and is constantly adding more and more. Snapchat is essentially a platform where you can send and receive photos and videos that erase as soon as you see them. It has a very specific procedure and interface. Any content on the platform is displayed for no longer than 10 seconds, and texts tend to be no more than a sentence long. “Objects in digital form can have multiple instantiations, existing as identical copies or as a variant examples of a common pattern.”- Murray. Snapchat’s initial concept emulated early stages of television when you could only see something once. Instead of creating something totally new Snapchat based itself on the past. For a digital artifact to be a participatory medium, the relationship between the user and the computer must be a mutually active exchange of commands and responses. “Because the computer is a participatory medium interactors have an expectation that they will be able to manipulate digital artifacts and make things happen in response to their actions.”- Murray. The user should also be able to easily access and find their desired actions on the digital interface, and it’s the digital designers job to insure there is no miscommunication between the user and the computer. Facebook is also a participatory medium because it relies heavily on interaction and user engagement. Facebook’s success was due to its popularity between users and positive responses towards the platform. The user interface is also very user friendly and comfortable to manage and get used to. Users are able to easily navigate the site, and the system responds promptly and efficiently to commands. “A large part of digital design is selecting the appropriate convention to communicate what actions are possible in ways that the human interactor can understand” – Murray. Facebook’s script is also very flexible; it does a good job at presenting recognizable icons that have universal meaning. Its design has a very natural flow, the search bar is at the top left section of the home page, the notifications and setting icons are at the top right, and on the sides one can find trending topics and advertisements. Everything about Facebooks platform is participatory. It allows the user to engage in different ways with the content, you are able to share, like, comment, follow, react, and post. In Affordances of the Digital Medium Murray talks about the status line on Facebook, and points out that due to the narrow design of the status box, it naturally invites users to engage with it and type up a quick response to the generic question “What’s on your mind?” Similarly, to Facebook, Snapchat relies on user participation and engagement. However, Snapchat takes engagement to the next level with small choices that make the platform borderline addictive. For example, if you receive an image from a friend, and open it but decide not to respond, the sender will know you have viewed their image and ignored it. This feature creates a sense of urgency and a need to respond and interact immediately out of fear of offending the sender. Snapchat also offers geotags, and filters which are stamps you can add to your image or video that displays your location, temperature, altitude, and speed. It also allows the user to add specific filters to the selfie, such as dog’s ears, sun glasses, face enhancements, and even face swapping with a friend. The filters keep the app highly interactive and exciting, everyday there are new filters featured on the app, giving users even more incentive to check it daily. Snapchat also recently released a feature called Snapchat Discover, which resembles a traditional newspaper or magazine stand and features media outlets, such as, The New York Times, BuzzFeed, Cosmopolitan Magazine, People, CNN, National Geographic, and others. Snapchat has maintained to its original vision of short disappearing images, therefore the content on Discover changes daily, nonetheless you can go back and look at it multiple times in one day. Most millennials use Facebook and Snapchat as their main sources of news and information. The amount of sources we view are limited leaving very few large media outlets the ones feeding us information. This creates a very narrow view point and the same headlines to be disseminated throughout platforms resulting in it being very difficult to find unbiased news sources. Before digital times there were hundreds of newspaper outlets, where people got their news from. With the rise of the internet and the digital era, these small news sources have died out and five main media corporations control most of the news. Therefore, as millennials growing up in an era where we trust technology and are faithful towards platforms like Facebook and Snapchat we must also be aware of this issue. Facebook and Snapchat, both have algorithmic qualities that only show us content that aligns with our interests and behaviors. On Snapchat Discover the news outlets available to browse varies depending on the user, and on Facebook the top stories on your timeline will vary depending on popularity and engagement of the post but also on the way you engage with other content on Facebook. Your newsfeed on Facebook will only show you posts from the same friends you tend to participate with and you may never see what many of your other friend’s post. Facebook does this by tracking your user behavior in order to show you similar content, knowing it will conduce higher engagement levels. I think that this affordance is one of the most important and that it holds a lot of power. Likes and followers are being monetized and market cap is being valued more than profitability. Facebook and Snapchats value comes from its users and their participation on the platform. The main goal of these companies is to increase participation levels, and they are constantly creating updates and innovating their platforms to keep their users engaged and tuned in. In order for a digital artifact to have the encyclopedic affordance it must efficiently be able to store and contain a large amount of data and information. While also being able to easily access this information in an organized and classified manner. “The challenge for designers is determining how to organize information so that it is retrievable in a coherent form that minimizes confusion and maximizes understanding.” – Murray Facebook is also an encyclopedic medium. It has a huge database of users, there are currently 1.2 billion people on Facebook. Facebook collects user’s information, such as demographics, gender, habits, interests, etc. and sells the information to advertises and monetizes from it. Facebook tries to gather as much information possible from its users and does so by prompting the user profile interface with personal questions. Facebook does not explicitly tell the user that their personal information is being sold to a third party, and does a good job of making the user feel as if their Facebook experience will be improved the more information they share. Nonetheless, given Facebook’s huge collection of data and information on people, users are easily able to look up and re connect with friends by just searching an area, school, interest, or activities. For example, you can search on Facebook using the prompt “friends who like…” or “friends from…” or “friends near me” and even narrow the search by post, tagged location, and date. Facebook manages a huge amount of data and makes it very accessible for users and advertisers to reach. Snapchat also handles a large amount of data, there are currently 140 million users on Snapchat. Murray describes the encyclopedic medium as the “Act of classification, of assigning objects too standardized categories often through the use of metadata.” One of the ways that Snapchat classifies its users is with emoji’s. Each emoji symbolizes a specific kind of friendship, depending on your levels of interaction. This mode of categorizing emulates real life friendships because it ranks your friends by friendship, it displays your top 8 best friends with a smile face next to their name. You also have the ability to create groups on Snapchat, which facilitates finding specific friends. Even through its organizational methods Snapchat has found a unique way to appeal to its target audience and maintain a sleek and user friendly interface. The spatial affordance has to do with how information is presented and the organizational and presentational quality of the content. “It creates virtual spaces that are also navigable by the interactor” –Murray. It may be related to a similar medium in order to satisfy the users expectations. It also takes into account the device that is used to display the digital content and how the device influences the digital space. “We perceive web pages as occupying sites that we visit” –Murray. Facebook is a space of its own. We frequently think about Facebook as a place we are on and go to. We speak about it as if it were a physical space in the world where we meet people, see things, and explore. We can also access Facebook through various devices be it a phone, iPad, laptop, desktop, etc. Facebook modifies its interface depending on the device. For example, if you use Facebook from your phone you will not be able to have the same array of features that exist on the desktop version. “Designers face challenges in providing a consistent model of the space as a whole and in making individual areas memorable and findable” –Murray. Facebook does a very good job at making everything findable and definitely memorable. Many icons are digital adaptations of preexisting non digital mediums. For example, the events icon simulates a normal calendar, the newsfeed button looks like the front page of a newspaper, and the birthday icon is a present. Even though Facebook is a digital platform it relies on traditional notions and images to associate with in order to appeal to the user’s expectations. Unlike Snapchat, Facebook does not rely on real time. Facebooks newsfeed used to flow according to most recent post, but since Facebook incorporated advertisements content is displayed by popularity or paid ads. Snapchat also holds a very unique space. You go on Snapchat to get a different experience than that of Facebook. Snapchat feels more personal and allows you to connect on a different level with other users. Snapchat has three main spaces or sections that have different functionalities. The camera, the stories section, and the chat section. The camera space has a very sleek and simple design with 6 icons or buttons on the borders of the camera. The main button in this section is found at the bottom middle and takes the picture. The other two icons to the left and right of the larger middle icon serve as navigational buttons that take you to the chat section and stories section. Naturally the chat icon is the standard messenger image, and the stories icon is unique to Snapchat and is just three circles that form a triangle emulating the way in which stories are displayed. To navigate to the other sections, you just swipe left or right, and on the top of each section there is a blue bar that reads the title of the section and on the bottom the same three icons are always displayed in the same order expect depending on what section you are using that specific icon will be underlined. If there are new stories that you have not seen Snapchat will illuminate the stories icon with purple and similarly if there is a new chat awaiting the chat icon will illuminate with blue. The stories area is divided by sections, your story which appears at the top and then a subtitle that reads “recent updates” where your friends stories appear in chronological order. Each story has a circular cover image that displays a snippet of the full story next to the person’s name, and bellow their name you can see how long ago the story was uploaded. It does not show a specific time, rather it displays the minutes or hours that have passed since the story was uploaded. As you scroll down there is a purple indicator to the right of the screen that has a time stamp of when the story was published, given that you can only view a story within 24 hours of it being uploaded. Snapchat has grasped our fast passed and constantly changing real world environment and space and incorporated it to its chore interface. Snapchat has created a space where you can upload videos and images instantaneously that are bounded by a time constraint, taping into our need to always be connected, updated, and on the radar. All four affordances are very important to Facebook and Snapchat’s success. They all work together to create these amazing platforms that not only have revolutionized our digital lives, but have become such a central part of our day to day lives that our habits as humans are changing. Evolution is changing how our brains work due to these social media platforms. Our attention spans are much shorter, we are less patient, are more impulsive, and put less effort into relationships. Source
Murray, Janet Horowitz. Inventing the medium: principles of interaction design as a cultural practice. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012. Print. The World Wide Web was created by Berners-Lee in 1989. The web would become a hub for creativity, global communication, and potential new markets. Berners-Lee’s early vision for the web concerned universality and creating a more connected realm of information as well as the importance of portability and extensibility. The web unlike other sources of media does not require gatekeepers or authorities controlling its information. On the web the users are in control of what they see and have endless choices. The web imitates traditional forms of communication media, such as newspapers, magazines, and books. It tries to present a familiar front to the use, emulating recognizable formatting. Early web designers focused mainly on replicating these mediums because they were aware that users were accustomed to consuming information in specific ways, and could not create something that was totally foreign to the typical user. That is why the central unit on a web site is called a page. The web also has its own spatial representation that guides the user through its platform. Navigation is one of the most important aspects that gives directionality to web creation.
The World Wide Web is part of the internet. One is able to access the web through a web browser. A web browser recognizes and translates files written in code called hypertext. The first web browsers also served for sending and receiving emails. The web system functions under the HTTP protocol. The system of delivery is one of the most important aspects of the web, it defines how efficiently information is received and interpreted by the user. Given that users usually had to wait a while for information to appear, the ability to satisfy was one of the most important elements in a successful web design. Hyperlinks allow users to give commands to their software. Hyperlinks in a specific document offer links to other documents relevant to that specific topic. The initial concept ideated by the creator of hypertext, was for all documents to be hyperlinked together in order to provide a greater access of information. The principal was that information is more valuable when connected to other information. Similarly, as the human mind goes about when associated new information to previous experiences and knowledge. Murray talks about four properties that are representative of computers; encyclopedic, spatial, procedural, and participatory. The objective in creating the best digital artifact possible is accomplished by successfully combining and using these four affordances. The way to think about computer programing is as a combination of abstract behaviors. Algorithms are the abstract set of guidelines and instructions programed into the computer system that simulate life like behaviors. The more lines of code and more possible outcomes to a problem the more complex the system is. Computational artifacts are characterized by moldable codes programed by specific rules and instructions. Computers are valued by their efficiency and ability to store and contain the largest amount of data and information.
The computer is also a participatory medium. The relationship between the user and the computer is a mutually active exchange of commands and responses. The user should be able to easily access and find their desired actions and it’s the digital designers job to insure there is no miscommunication between the user and the computer. Security and privacy is also a big issue with the rise of digital communication. Systems are storing large amounts of public data and information, and users are not aware of their loss of privacy. The access and ownership of data has become a way to monetize and measure digital success. The more data a digital artifact has the more powerful it can be. However, this massive exchange and flow of information has also lead to crimes such as identify theft and the rise of hackers that corrupt these systems. Users have also begun creating and distributing their own media artifacts, and gaining power by the amount of viewers that engage with their content. HCI is concerned with the relationship humans have with computers. One of the main tasks of digital designers is taking into account human restrictions and habits. The digital world has a realm of its own but does not want to seam foreign and unknown to its users, therefore it aims to imitate the real world. For example, the invention of the dock on the desktop was meant to be associated with a boat dock, where users could park and easily access their favorite applications. Digital designers also encounter challenges when trying to decide how similar certain features should be to the real artifact it is imitating. Such as a book, a folder, or a movie. The computer is also an encyclopedic medium because it provides access to catalogued and organized information. The challenge for computer designers is organizing information so it is easily obtainable and viewable by users. The computer is classified as spatial because it contains its own virtual space. The stylistic choices of designing and sizing virtual images is challenging because they must be recognizable and accessible to users but also contain a unique formatting of their own. McLuhan talks about the effects of media and technology on society. Even though this was written in 1964, McLuhan had a pretty accurate depiction of where media was heading, and a very modern outlook on technology and the way we interact with it. He mentions an interesting idea, which I would have never thought to question before. “We live mythically and integrally as it were but we continue to think in the old fragmented space and time patterns of the pre electric age.” We continue to abide by the laws and patterns of space and time set up in the pre electric age, when we are currently living in an electric era. I never considered another way to think about time and space, but technology has revolutionized our generation to the extent that the way we interact with each other, consumer information, and perceive time has changed. Therefore, it would seem natural for an evolved sense of time and space to arise.
McLuhan also talks about minority groups and how electric media has created a space for them within society and reinforced their involvement and acceptance. It is easier to understand and be aware of different cultures given their exposure through media. McLuhan also refers to his era as the age of anxiety, given the commitment and participation that comes with the use of technology. This idea is very similar to the effect social media has on millennials, it is widely known that social media platforms can be addictive, lead to anxiety, and even depression. Technology has created a sense of constant urgency, given the speed in which we consume and engage with information. McLuhan acknowledged this effect technology has on us before it became a major issue in society. McLuhan also suggests that a huge imprint of his time was the revolt against forced patterns. Mainstream media usually tries to impose traditional social norms and values onto society, and socially condemning those who do not obey. However, with the rise of alternative forms of media and communication, unconventional messages that go against the mainstream media begin to arise. McLuhan argues that instead of obsessing over how technology has impacted our society and whether it is positive or negative, we should think about how we are using technology and if we are using it in the right way or for the right reasons. “It’s not the machine but what one did with the machine, that was its meaning or message”-McLuhan. He stresses that the medium is the message, meaning that technology serves as a means for communicating messages. The way we decide to interact with the medium is the message itself. He also touches on the idea of how technology and machines have altered the way we interact with each other and ourselves, which is another pretty modern concept for his time. He notices that machines have definitely caused an alteration to the way we carry out relationships and have created new ways of interacting. He stresses the importance of recognizing the power of media and recognizing what each media message is trying to evoke. |
AuthorI am from Panama and a sophomore at Emory University. I am passionate about photography and media making. Archives |