Assignment 1

Site Navegation as Interaction

You will create a hypertextual website that consists of linked pages. Each page will contain either three words or three images. [Choose either images or words and stick with it for all of the pages in this assignment.] Each word or image is a link to a different page that also contains three words or images.

Pay particular attention to the relationships between the elements on each individual page and between a link's image or word and the elements on the page to which the link leads. Consider the difference between a smooth (or transparent) experience and a striated (or opaque) experience that can be created with the links and the pages to which they lead. Smooth, or transparent, experiences deliver what they promise, with as little attention to the medium as possible. Striated, or opaque, experiences offer interrupted or jarring experiences, where the medium is very apparent.

Consider the ways in which transparency or opacity in the relationship between links and their destinations create meaning. Also consider the meaning created by the relationships between the three adjacent elements on each individual page.

The user should have at least five levels/pages of experience anywhere [s]he goes. Because the site would grow exponentially and be extremely large if constructed as a heirarchical tree, you are allowed to have dead-end pages as well as repeated pages. But be sure you consider the reasons for and placement of the dead-end and repeated pages.

Apply the [X]HTML you have learned to this project, including basic layout, link properties, and the "hover" pseudoclass.

In class, we looked at Love or Lust and Tactics for Survival in the New Culture and discussed their relation to this assignment. Consider the simple means they use to create provocative and interesing interaction between the user and the site.

Use frames to create a single web page that juxtaposes historical events and/or figures in meaningful ways. The page should access and display various interlinked HTML files within its frames. The easiest way to approach this might be to make the individual HTML files independently and then make a frameset that displays them on the same page.

Download pages from somebody else's site online [both the [X]HTML and the images]. Then change and distort their data and upload the results as a new site. Be able to discuss the following questions:
- Why did you choose the site you chose?
-Where or how is meaning generated by the changes you made?
-How is the relationship between your site and the original site meaningful?

This piece does not have to be explicitly political, though some of the more obvious examples (gatt.org, etc.) might be.
What could you do with this university's site or with the Aryan Nations' site? How about your significant other's MySpace page or Apple.com? Everybody and everything has a web page, from baby food companies to arms manufacturers, from 10-year-old bloggers to David Hasselhoff. What is interesting to you?

Email me a proposal before Spring Break. Site maps will be due March 28 and the final piece should be uploaded to the server by April 4.

Multi-page video and audio project

For your final assignment, you will create a site that integrates audio and video into HTML pages. I won't require a specific number of pages because the complexity of the pages and the audio/video recording and editing can vary widely. This assignment is wide open, both technically and conceptually; rather than having you respond to some prompt I give you, I want you to work as independent artists.
Revisit the sites we looked at in class on March 28 and April 16 and look at the ways audio and video are used in web pages.
Think about some of the topics we have discussed this semester and how they might be dealt with using audio and video in web pages: art and technology, hacktivism and tactical media, narrative and hypertext, authorship, identity, privacy and surveillance, performance and documentation, etc.
You may use found footage/recordings, but be careful; it's easy to become both technically and mentally lazy when you rely on youtube, google video, and image searches. I would suggest that you start with clear ideas and, if they happen to involve things that might be documented in video online (footage of historical events, etc), then you can look for that documentation. I also caution you against making video/music montages and music videos.
Email or give me a copy of your proposal and on April 23 or 25 we'll talk about your progress.