Jack of All Trades

This blog is meant to be a summary of things I am learning, doing, or sharing.

[tommyiii-blog]

Assignment: Take an existing show, movie, or book and recreate that show in a non-linear format utilizing the skills learned in Art 355 (Web Design).

Solution:  For this project I decided to recreate the Spy Show 'Archer'.  The show is crude comedy based around a spy agency and features self-absorbed, psychologically  dysfunctional, sexually promiscuous characters.  I decided that a web-site that included a description of these dysfunctions was important.  I thought the site should also be centered around the spy agency itself: ISIS.  The concept that developed is a fictional agent-query database in which the characters are all connected to each other through relationship links.

If you like archer or have any comments about my idea let me know!  Later.

[tommyiii-blog]

It seems almost every weekend I am taking a trip into LA for somethin' or other.  A couple weeks back I went to "Art in the Streets" at the Geffen Contemporary Art Museum at MOCA. This is an amazing exhibit to experience. I grew up as a little skater punk in SoCal, and I feel a deep connection to the skateboarding/surfing culture. In many ways, I also feel a connection to the street art culture that has existed under the rug for so long. There is a rebellious nature to "Street Art" and in my early youth I was drawn to anything that existed against the grain, as "Street Art" does. Anyway enough about me.

Art in the streets is a culmination and exhibition of the art that rose out of three distinct cultural segments. Latino Gang Culture, Hip Hop Culture, and Skateboarding & Surf Culture. The exhibit features a wide range of contemporary pieces as well. I have posted a few of my favorites for you to enjoy. If you get the chance be sure to check out "Art in the Streets" running 'til August 8, 2011

[tommyiii-blog]

On Saturday May 21st, I went to the soapbox races in downtown LA.  There was this awesome Scion FRS mini replica Created by Troy Sumitomo of 5 Axis Concepts. Driving this beast of a soapbox car was Dai Yoshiahra (Formula Drift Driver for FalkenTire. They didn't win (Primarily because the last 400ft of the course was almost flat) but they did finish the race, which can not be said of many of the other 'boxes that raced. At the end of the day they definitely had the finest looking car of the show.

[tommyiii-blog]

We Live in Public! = Fail

We live in public was a view of the life of an internet entrepreneur.  The focus character Josh Harris reminds me a lot of the character "Mr. Brainwash" who is in the documentary "Exit through the gift shop".  In "Exit through the gift shop" Mr. Brainwash is a self proclaimed film maker who never really successfully makes a film.  He films footage and stores the film, but he seems to be slightly mentally disturbed and his motivations seem to be in the wrong place.  I think this is how Josh Harris' character (life) turns out in the documentary "We live in Public".  Josh Harris goes from being a programmer to an entrepreneur to a self-proclaimed artist.  In all accounts, as was portrayed in the documentary, Josh Harris never really gets a grasp on any final productive goal of doing what he is doing.  He throws lavish parties and meets very interesting people to work at his web-site pseudo, but pseudo kind of fizzle's out of existence as Josh Harris turns his focus onto different projects (Note that these projects are and would have been considered very weird for the figure head of a business).  

Josh Harris' claim to fame as an "artist" was We Live In Public, a project in which people were placed into cells, able to see and interact with all the other people in every other cell.  The documentary claims that this is a precursor to social networking on the internet on sites such as Facebook and Myspace.  It is true there are unmistakable similarities.  But the difference between Josh Harris' We Live in Public is that he is bat shit insane!  A cultish church?  A gun range?  Communal showers?  It seems as though Josh Harris was trying to create a world that existed in a science fiction movie. Facebook yes does offer the users the ability to see other users life's, but only with the permission and filters of those certain users.  To degrade people like Josh Harris did, not only in "We Live in Public" but also with his lover and girlfriend, is not ART.  At best it is an experiment in behavior.  It teaches us very little about how to better understand life and It is by no means aesthetically beautiful. 

[tommyiii-blog]

As we think (As we may think) - The Genius of Vannevar Bush

As we may think was an enormously interesting article written shorty after World War II. In this article Bush critiques the way in which the structure and accumulation of information has evolved (remember this is in 1940's).  He states that far too much of the time of intelligent and talented people is wasted on searching for and sifting through information, most of which turns out to be irrelevant.  He describes the current model (in the 1940's) of information accumulation and points out its weaknesses.  It's main weakness is that the information is collected and stored alphabetically.  Bush suggests that this is not the best way for information to be arranged and stored.  He suggests that the human brain does not store information in that way and therefore information for retrieval should not be stored in that way.  Bush describes the way information is stored in the human brain.  He describes the connections between ideas that are relevant.  For example if you think of apple, next thoughts might be orange, or tree, or red.  In the status quo system of information storage, if you think of apple, the next pieces of information may be aardvark or alligator.  From this example one can begin to see the problem with this way of storing information.  There is no relation between one information bit entry and the next.

Bush (in the 1940's) suggests that a new model for information storage is necessary in order for the continued development of fields.  He describes a device called a "memex" that is the model for this new system of information storage.  Within this model, information can be extracted from any entry point and it's organization is not by any alphabetical or chronological system, but rather the system is set up such that every piece of information can be found through it's relationships and relevance to other pieces of information (just like how the human brain often functions).  Bush was definitely ahead of his time.

[tommyiii-blog]

World Wide Web Article from 1994?

Wow.  It's hard to imagine that the World Wide Web (W3) was an infant at some point.  Reading the article by Tim Berners-Lee was really interesting considering the vast inclusion of the internet into everything we do today.

In the article, Lee states that the (W3) was and is an attempt to create a network for collaboration.  The (W3) would be made up of clients throughout the world.  At this time in 1994, "hypertext.. was aimed to be powerful enough to express all user interfaces while being sufficiently simple enough to require no training for the computer user." (Lee)  W3 was the culmination of the idea of a creation of a boundless information world in which all items have a reference by which they can be retrieved. 

Lee's article goes deep into definitions of URI, HTTP, HTML, FTP, and NNTP.  It is very amusing to me that Lee goes into "Recent Developments".  In these developments he talks about different browsers availbable and the fact that at that point in 1994 there were 829 registered servers.  Now that number is in the millions. 

The article intended to give the reader a sense of what the W3 is and where it is going.  Obviously (since we live in 2011) the web exploded and expanded further than anyone ever imagined and did allow for collaboration of people.  Now people are publishing their information as they please, easily and without any knowledge.