R. Lee Montgomery

Artists

Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries
Animated storytelling using simple text formatting and sound.  Uses Adobe Flash for a controlled cinematic progression without interactivity.

Jodi.org
Early and ongoing abstraction using code manipulation.  The main website randomly places you in one of their many projects which include various web and game related technologies ranging from games to blogs to simple html page formatting.

mouchette
A website for a constructed identity.  By joining the community you can contribute to the development of the character and “act” for other participants.

Meggan Gould
Photographic portraiture using people’s computer desktops as a stand-in for themselves.  Where do we place identity in a realm where the computer mediates our existence?  Voodoo?  (Photo professor at UNM).

Alexei Shulgin
Much earlier examination of the computer desktop as a representation of the self.

Cory Arcangel
Writes code to develop impractical manipulations of the virtual environment. Recently he has mined people’s blogs for references to blogger apologies for “not posting”.

Jeff Crouse
Appropriation and juxtaposition of existing approaches to web based technologies.  Gives us suggestions of new and more exciting, often more social uses of technologies that are frequently designed for individual entertainment.  Also works creatively as an activist.

RT Mark
Leverages confusion about web based identity to develop political and activist commentary.

The Yes men
(see RT Mark)

Form Art
Using HTML tags specified for the designing of forms to create web based imagery and useless interaction.  Revealing the arbitrary nature of certain aesthetics we encounter without examination.

Glitchr
Manipulates the facebook template to intervene in the facebook interface using simple html and javascript code in status messages.  A form of aesthetic hacking.

Chloe Flores
A facebook identity that has served as “residency” for various artists.

Lee Walton – What my friends are doing on facebook.
Videos based on “the status update” inspiring us to think about how we use Facebook.

Reading 

How I failed …  and finally succeeded at learning code.
The author of this article discusses the process of learning how to write code, and the importance of perspective.

Walter Benjamin – The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
If you have not yet read this… you should.   If you don’t remember the details of the essay… read it again. I will refer to it often.

Style Sheets Reading
some reference material for CSS.

Javascript Foundations
Getting started with Javascript.  Refer to some of the references in last week’s post too.

Eloquent Javascript
Start walking through these chapters to begin understanding javascript.

Technical links

Html Validator
run your HTML code through here to check for blank spaces and missing tags/attributes.

attributes and their values
some attributes to experiment with in developing style sheets

List as Menu CSS example
A tutorial for making a rollover menu from a list using only CSS.  Figure out how this works to prepare for making javascript behaviors.

scriptaculous
for those who are ready… a javascript library to experiment with.