Katie Hadgis @khadgis - Tumblr Blog

Final Blog Post

My educational experience is much different than my parents’. My parents are very traditional engineers who are entirely career driven. I can’t imagine going to school/signing my life away to someone else, much less a corporation. Maybe it was easier for my parents to just go with the flow because they could get a secure career out of what they really enjoy, whereas what I really enjoy is not really marketable. I get that they only want to help me be successful, but it was frustrating to try and figure myself out before coming to Pratt. I never even considered that it was possible to be an artist until I came here. My parents were very excited about me going to college and always said “college is the one time where it’s all about you,” but it REALLY wasn’t until I came to Pratt.

The internet has absolutely changed academia, especially when college is so outrageously expensive in the US. There have been growing movements on the internet to make knowledge free and accessible to the public. Lynda.com is great because you can learn virtually any computer skill and get a certification from them for an extremely affordable price. Online communities like reddit are exactly that: communities. They have a self-defined, non-capitalistic hierarchy dedicated to whatever the topic is. I enjoy and thrive being in a purely academic environment, but I absolutely advocate independent learning. Money aside, I think it’s also important to be self-driven.

I identify as a digital artist. It used to be that I relied on computers because it was the only skill I had, but now it’s really the only thing I’m interested in pursuing conceptually. I am fascinated by internet culture and communities, and the implications they have on our present and future. Nowadays I use physical “traditional” media as assets to my work, but I can’t imagine making work that has nothing to do with digital spaces. I think calling myself a digital artist is as specific as I would go, since my skills and interests are so wide and varied.

Going to college is either really good or really bad. It’s great to be surrounded by like-minded people and being able to pursue your interests without interruption. BUT If you are in the wrong school or program, going to college can be harmful. I never felt like I fit in... anywhere! Until I went to a school that aligned more with my interests. Even so - no matter where you go you will have to do things you don’t want to do. When college is so expensive, the cons might outweigh the pros, especially when you can direct your own learning independently.

#internet

nostalgiacritgif

Flubber

https://youtu.be/c5R7ZL_qg-g

khadgis

I LOVE FLUBBER

#internet

call me tammy two-tries

Today I'm working at the gallery helping this year's thesis students set up for their show. there isn't a lot going on, so I have a lot of time to think about my own thesis and how it would fit into a similar show in a similar space. As I've said, my main goal for my thesis is to express my negativity so that a) I can remove it from my system in a healthy way, and b) so that others can understand what is so hard for me to express. I started with the story of The False Hermit using metaphor and fable as tools to communicate my fears and feelings, but the more I developed the story, the further it got away from me, and the more I realized it needed to be about me. I know I often hide behind other ideas or characters, to avoid having to spend time thinking about myself. I make artwork that is deliberately very much not about me, but I am realizing that expressing myself is becoming less of a distant curiosity and more of a desperate necessity. I've never really known who I am as a person or what I want to say. I dont think I have any kind of "aesthetic", and I know I don't have anything nice to say. I'm not shy, I'm just perpetually irritated! And I know that's not something people want to hear about, so I keep it to myself. But for my thesis, I'm going to be selfish. I am desperate for people to understand who I am and what I hear and feel. Depression, anxiety and OCD to me are as physical as they are emotional or mental. It's debilitating, crushing, and impossible to describe. So for my thesis I won't be hiding behind a mask, I'm going to throw myself and my real feelings into my work, even if I am afraid. This way it will be virtually impossible for me to be disappointed in my work (though I will still probably find a way).

#seminar2

My ultimate goal is to convey the verbally indescribable feelings associated with my own experiences with depression, anxiety and self harm.

That’s it.

I’ve tried doing this in a lot of ways. I could show people through photography or performance but I was absolutely terrified of putting myself on display. I’ve tried drawing and illustration, but regardless of my drawing skills, the pictures I make don’t make the viewer feel what I feel, and are therefore ineffective. I could build a website, video game, or mobile application, but as soon as you start coding, you’re confining yourself to rules and organization. Putting something behind a screen is the same thing as putting up a barrier between the user and the experience - which I explored at Clarkson. And the experience is what is most important to me overall. I want to make viewer uncomfortable. I want to upset people. I want people to feel what I feel as a means of communication because I am desperate for someone to understand me, and desperate to get this negativity out of my system.

Through all this struggle, I have determined that in my own work, the medium is not the message. The medium serves the message. I am quick to adhere myself to a medium or skill without thinking how I could effectively apply it to my own work. In doing so, my work often appears to be a study of something else and is wholly non-personal. I’ve spent my entire life learning “valuable” skills but have never taken time to think about myself, or even be myself. Here is my chance.

This is not to say that I reject the idea that “the medium is the message,” only that in the development stage of my thesis, it is more helpful for me to think of the message first. I am sure that as the thesis itself is created, the medium will absolutely enforce the message and become the piece itself.

So while I would love to be a professional illustrator, and I would love to develop huge, in-depth video games, I find both of these areas ultimately unsatisfying because creating either of these things alone do not allow me to effectively express myself. These are not a source of release, but a source of more frustration.

#seminar2

some progress

#internet

Response to Best of 2015: Our Top 10 Works of Internet Art

By using the pronoun “our,” Hyperallergic already confirms that this top ten list is subjective. They also say they are choosing from “the paths of the information superhighway we’ve traversed this year,” confirming that they are not considering anything and everything found on the Internet in 2015 - which would obviously be impossible. That being said, I am curious which works did not make the list. I am also curious as to how Hyperallergic defines Internet Art.

All of the works here are clearly gallery-worthy: The content of each piece is very stylish and meant to be taken seriously. The Internet is a seemingly endless place, and ultimately, it is narrow-minded to say that you are “tackling the World Wide Web” if you are deliberately only even considering works that fit your own aesthetic. The whole premise of digital art is to bring new, modern ideas to the art world, often through new technology, to reflect the state of the current world. As any digital artist knows, this is met with a great deal of animosity from more “traditional” art groups. Why then, do self-proclaimed progressive artists continue this tradition of pretentiousness and object-purity? The subset of Internet Art put forward by Hyperallergic is a small one that is in principle very different from what the Internet actually is: an massive, anarchic, entropic cesspool of data, opinions, and human consciousness. If anything, Hyperallergic asserts the gallery aesthetic into the Internet, instead of extracting and examining the Internet for what it actually is.

#internet

Thought Experiments & Alternative Realities

At first this was really hard to think about - all of my ideas were essentially based in reality: tiny microcomputers that glow and follow you like fairies, a doctor robot that can personally diagnose you, and of course, teleportation. These are more or less hopes for the future, rather than realities based in non-realities.

I am obsessed with the idea of magic and manipulating one’s soul or spirit (not in a factual sense, but from a storytelling sense.). If magic were real, how would that influence technology? I have to believe that technology would center around it, when there is so much potential energy based in it. Magic would be power, possibly replacing electricity altogether. To have magic would be to have power - Bill Gates would have started out as a warlock in a garage.

If magic is the manipulation of a spirit, you’d run into a lot more problems dealing with privacy. Within a fantasy world, the use of magic in a traditional sense is typically controversial, in that a magic user can control things that are considered “unnatural,” for whatever reason, often religious. But this controversy and fear of magic in books and tv reflects our own fear of new technology and relinquishing control to some third party. The idea of magic is fundamentally impossible and fantastical, but if it were real, I think we would ultimately face a lot of the same issues, but under a different name. Perhaps this is the human experience - both real and unreal; past, present, and future.

#I could day dream about this stuff allllllllllllll day #internet

Response to The Image Object Post-Internet by Artie Vierkant

First of all, it was really nice that this essay outlined different art terms, like Post-Internet and New Media. Obviously I’ve heard them used a lot, and I’ve even studied different aspects of them, but it wasn’t until now that I realized I never actually had a set definition for such definite terms.

Ultimately I think this essay might over exaggerate the “different-ness” of the “digital age” compared to decades passed. Computers might appear to be big scary metal machines, but in hind sight it’s both obvious and seamless the way that they came about. Computers didn’t just appear one day; they took hundreds of slow methodical development to create. Is it possible that things have not changed as much as we would like to believe? We are still just sentient creatures aiming to express ourselves and understand the world, which I believe is an asymptotical, unachievable goal.

#internet

The Internet Has Made My Work Stronger

If you’re dissatisfied with your life or feel like you have little control of it, the Internet is the place for you! On the Internet we are not limited by our human bodies or presumed labels. The Internet is a collective of human consciousness in the form of data. The Internet has helped me learn more about who I am and what I want from my life, regardless of boundaries I have put up around myself in the physical world. I am still learning and will probably never stop learning.

#internet

Building an Interactive Graphic Novel

I am finding now that my work isn’t about experimenting with some new technology and observing the results - instead I actually have content I want to make and share. It’s like making a change from a sort of new media formalism into something more contextual or human. Because of this, I want to use the most efficient technology for the job, not necessarily the most complex.

In this case, I want to make a graphic novel. I am using HTML5/Javascript just because it’s the environment I feel most comfortable in. I don’t have to spend time learning something new - I can focus my efforts on the illustration and storytelling. I also think interactive graphic novels have the potential to simply be more immersive, as they also can include elements of more complex animation or decision making.

For my alpha project, I simply focused on getting to know the Javascript libraries associated with parallax scrolling and animation. I learned which DOM objects are best defined as scenes, triggers, and blocks, and worked on making the pipeline a little more efficient for when I will need to import, load, and destroy images. Now, for the beta, I will be able to focus on the content of this graphic novel.

Interactive Graphic Novel: The Boat

Inspiration: Stand Still, Stay Silent (current read), Watchmen (a classic)

Download my alpha · ScrollMagic · parallax.js · GSAP

#internet #today

some basic colors and forms??? hairstyle tbd. I can never render past this point which is pretty pathetic. I’ve been trying for about 2 hrs to no avail. meanwhile I am taking robotics and other classes that keep me from doing things that actually matter. I’ve been waiting my whole life to be an illustrator and I still don’t have the skills or time or support. i wish i could paint smarter, not harder. I’m beyond frustrated~ ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

#hooray #seminar2

Final Project Proposal

For my final project, I will be writing an interactive fiction piece using http://textadventures.co.uk/. Interactive fiction has been around since the 70′s when graphics were not common on computers. The story itself will be the story I am writing for my thesis, but in text only. This will allow me to flesh out the gameplay as easily as possible.

When I was in middle school I played Thy Dungeonman 1 - 3 on homestarrunner.com, which is a parody of 80′s fantasy text adventures. The creators of homestarrunner are definitely old enough and nerdy enough to have played the original games like Zork and Adventureland when they were kids. It’s only now that I am seeing how important interactive fiction is, and how it is the perfect tool for me developing all the details of my story.

I considered using Twine, but textadventures.co.uk allows for user input. So instead of giving users pre-canned options to choose from, the user will have to look around and try different things out. I always look for games that don’t hold your hand - games that force you to be inquisitive and think critically. This brings a greater level of awe and satisfaction to the player, or at least that has been my experience as a user.

The story itself is the story of the Alchemist, a yet unnamed 30-something man who lives at home with his mother, an ancient and powerful Witch. Unfortunately, the Witch is dying in her old age, a fact the Alchemist cannot accept. The Witch’s familiar, an old wolfhound, takes the Alchemist on a journey to find a spell that will extend her life. In doing so, the Alchemist meets three ancestral spirits, and learns the forgotten ways and language of his people.

That’s the short summary, without giving too much away. I have much more outlined on my google drive. To be honest, I’m quite protective of this story and would prefer not to publicly release anymore details here. But I would like to discuss them with professors and advisors who can help me make the story more polished and evocative.

#internet

Triple Goddesses and Old Folks

I’m returning to the story of The Alchemist that I started brainstorming over winter break. It’s meaningful to me, and lately I’ve developed some plot devices and symbols to keep it moving. It’s a story about fearing loss and learning to let go. Hopefully I will have a rough understanding of the whole journey from start to finish before studio visits next week.

Speaking of studio visits, I have 1 of 3 confirmed. Each of the faculty members I contacted focus on animation, and either narrative or illustration, which are definitely the driving forces of the concept, and the areas I need most help with.

#seminar2

Response to Fernando Alfonso III’s The animated history of the GIF

To me, gifs are are a combination of advanced emoticons and short videos. By extension, Vines, and now web.m, are gifs that rely on sound. Their portability and collectability (among other things) makes them incredibly popular. I agree with Lialina that using apps to make gifs is a little annoying - watermarks really grind my gears, and typically their capabilities are limited. The great thing about gifs are the possibilities, after all.

I, for one, am pretty tired of “gif culture.” Reaction gifs are not funny. This is most likely because I am a disgusting internet hipster staying on top of all the “latest internet trends.” “Reaction gifs are so 2012.” Then again, I find myself growing extremely tired of any meme these days. As YouTube user IHateEverything put it, memes are an inside joke between everyone who has seen the meme, but the joke doesn’t actually mean anything. It’s just knowing the joke that makes it popular.

#internet

Response to A Brief History of Animated GIF Art, Part One

gifs are so common now that it’s strange to think about them in a historical or critical context. It sounds like at the time, gifs were a major step not just in creating art, but in creating virtual spaces to host art. Various forms of other early digital art do this too, but gifs are far more portable and easy to make. I think Vine is essentially a community of gifs with sound. web.ms have also become more popular lately because they have sound as well. Having sound play automatically on a site, unless that is the site’s purpose, is a huge no-no, so I feel like gifs won’t fade out entirely. Can you imagine forums with multiple tracks playing at once? When it comes to taking in information, we can focus our eyes, but not so much our ears.

#internet