WEEKS 28-30: COLLABORATE

WEEK 30 AIM: Finalize my part three project & evaluate the work I have done. What are the strengths and weaknesses of my approaches?

03.05.2022

During class today, everyone participated in a crit, and we were able to go around and have a look at all the outcomes from each GCD classroom. Our presentation went very well. We began to talk about the project chronologically, in the sense that there was a past, present, and future to our work. I think this is a good way to think about our collaborative process. We each came to the project with a past: this was the context in which we were already working on our individual projects. The present was obviously the project itself, its successes/failures, and the ways in which we communicated our concept. The future, which is the fun bit, in my opinion, deals with how we might further our project's narrative outside of the classroom. For us, this meant potentially migrating our work to an exhibition space. I think it would be really interesting to see how we can develop a way of physically experiencing other people's browser history. Creating a physical space for a digital landscape is something that hasn't been done too much in the art world. Whether our exhibit be a small room covered in screenshots, or a more breathable, spaced-out exhibit is unknown to me, but I think it would be a great idea to see if I can set something up over the summer!

WHAT DID YOU TAKE AWAY FROM THE PROCESS OF COLLECTIVE WORKING AND EXCHANGE?

I learned how important it is to participate in more collaborative projects in the future. This experience has been really educational overall: it has developed my individual creative process as well as given me a sense of how the professional design world operates. Although collaborative projects come with a lot of compromises, it offers the wisdom of other informed artists (which is priceless in my opinion)! In this sense, there is so much visual/conceptual inspiration to take away from collaborative projects that can be incorporated into my own creative practice.

HOW HAS YOUR PERCEPTION OF "THE ARCHIVE" SHIFTED SINCE THIS PROJECT?

I am excited by the potential of how archives can be displayed. My initial perception of "the archive" was much more traditional and close-minded... It was a museum display, a case of items, or a file drawer. This project made me realize that the best archives are much more than that. They should be invigorating, and the way that an audience explores the archive should be considered (perhaps in a way that reflects the archive's content?) I think that the way an archive is experienced is just as important as the content within it.

WHAT WAS THE EFFECT OF POSITIONING YOUR WORK IN PUBLIC? HOW IS THIS DIFFERENT FROM THE DIGITAL LANDSCAPE OF OUR WEBSITE?

The poster outcomes we created were a great representation of the archive embedded within our website. I think of the posters as an advertisement or movie trailer. They are meant to invite the audience to learn more about what we were doing without spoiling the best part. I think the careful consideration of our poster placement had a lot to do with its success in generating attention. Depending on the search query listed on the poster, we needed to think about which place would either highlight or contrast with its content. This was done very well for the mysexymatches poster. By placing this one in a posh/developed environment, it gains a shock factor. For better or for worse, this got us a lot of attention and made for a really great picture. I think the digital landscape of the website was much more comprehensive, but harder to advertise within the digital realm. I'm glad we merged our advertising campaign into the real world because it would have been hard to garner attention in an exclusively digital way.

ARE YOU HAPPY WITH THE SYSTEM OF COMMUNICATION YOU HAVE CREATED? WHAT WERE ITS WEAKNESSES?

I am very happy with the system of communication we created. The website was a great place for the archive, and the posters did a fantastic job of standing out to further our project's narrative. We wanted to place something very private in a public setting, and generate shock/entertainment by doing so. I think that we accomplished this goal through the posters and website. The only real weakness I determined was the actual advertising below the poster. I think that the graphic design could have been improved a bit so that the poster's true purpose would be more obvious. I would also have added a search feature to our archive if I had the time and resources to do so.

HOW HAS THIS PROJECT INSPIRED YOUR PRACTICE?

I want to work more in the realm of internet archiving, especially through the lens of conceptual art. The sociology behind our relationship to the internet is so fascinating to me, and I think exploring this through physical installation and experimental websites would be a really fantastic way to investigate this further.

WEEK 29 AIM: Collect material for our collaborative project archive and formulate an effective/creative way of presenting our findings to the public. Inform my work with UX references and develop a layout that will be intuitive for my audience.

28.04.2022

Today we had to do a mock pitch of our project (as a work in progress) to another group who was seated at our table. At this point, I am getting really close to finishing the website, and all of the photos taken yesterday are being edited by Kirsty. I think we're making really good progress! I was able to show the group our website, and although the archive is not yet comprehensive enough to be considered finished, most of the UX has been developed. This means that the finished product should look and feel pretty similar to how it exists today...

PREPARATION FOR PITCH:

How well are you working as a team? Is the division of tasks clear and are you utilising each other's skills effectively?

I think that we are very effectively collaborating on this project. Each of us has done an equal amount of work in realizing our series of outcomes, and we have all been vocalizing our ideas to each other while maintaining a high level of respect. I honestly couldn't have asked for a better group of people to work with. Divided tasks are listed in yesterday's reflection

How does the material collected relate to your theme or subject matter?

We collected everyone's most recent search queries. This is a private element of one's life that we are placing in two very public environments: the internet and the city of London.

What aspects of the content are most interesting?

According to our peers, the website is very visually pleasing, and its randomized, messy organization of the survey responses showed an unexpected yet playful approach to an archive.

What needs more information or clarity to communicate clearly? (Collect response from two other groups)

Our peers determined that it might be nice to have a more detailed explanation of our project's philosophy on the website. However, they said it wasn't really necessary, and should only be incorporated if we want to/have time.

How is the material intended to be organised?

The material is meant to be disorganized in appearance. There is no rhyme or reason to the sizing/order of the submissions, and each submission image is draggable by the user, so that they may reorganize our content themselves.

How will this display or presentation format maximise the potential of your content?

I think that the posters and website work well to create an entertaining campaign. The posters generate interest with their unexpected scale and content. On the other hand, the website is fully interactive and invites the user to leave their own trace of internet history in our archive.

In addition to gathering feedback from a different group, I wanted to make sure that my group members felt confident in the digital archive that I created. I inquired about the disorganized layout of our page (which I wasn't super sure was a good idea) and they agreed that it gave the site a playful feel. I think for the most part my group members were happy with the way everything looked...

I tried to match the aesthetics of the website to some of the work I have seen Kirsty create. I also used her sense of style as inspiration, oddly enough. Her artwork and her amazing outfits have a vibrant feel to them, which I really admire. I also found the website for Heaven's Gate as I was developing, and that gave me a lot of great visuals to draw on. I wanted to give the website a sort of intentionally tacky finish, almost as if it were developed in the 90s with modern technology.

I think I also created some visual consistencies between my personal NETSCARF endeavor and this website. I don't really know if this was intentional or not, but I definitely feel as though my work is beginning to develop a more comprehensive style. This project allowed me to test the boundaries of my style through working in a new medium and with more of a fine-art, archival practice. Working in a group setting also gave our project considerably more depth, as it was formed by three very different artistic practices rather than just one. If I were to approach this same brief solo, I would never have thought of creating something interactive... or to leave our survey results untouched in the final archive. I think that the way our screenshots were formatted as A0 posters was a brilliant idea, and this simplistic approach is definitely something I wouldn't have considered on my own. It taught me that sometimes, the best results ARE simple, and allowing the screenshots to speak for themselves was enough to provoke audience engagement. This makes me want to further experiment with untouched digital imagery (like gifs or loading screens) to see how they might interact with the physical world.

27.04.2022

Yesterday we didn't participate in much collaborative discussion, but some time was spent delegating tasks to each group member so that we would be finished with our project for the crit on Tuesday. Our group functions really well in the sense that we don't need much communication to get stuff done. When it's necessary to further our project context, we are able to have a really productive discussion, but otherwise, we are all comfortable working on our own to develop the work. The tasks we delegated are as follows:

ME: Develop website & compile submissions into an interactive, user-friendly interface (due TUESDAY)

KIRSTY: Design posters for our campaign (due TOMORROW)

ROSE: Sifting through submissions & consolidating the best ones into a uniform layout by screenshotting them on her phone.

Today we purchased & installed our posters in context. Kirsty's design turned out great & the screenshots are really hilarious. It's interesting to see a screenshot created tangible & scaled up to an absurd A0 size. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to attend the whole shoot because of a doctor's appointment, but I would have loved to see how the general public reacted to seeing these posters hung in public spaces. Especially considering the humorous and occasionally sensitive nature of some of the searches.

Although I wasn't able to attend the shoot, I wanted to include an excerpt from Kirsty's reflection that details the day very well:

"...Rose and I then travelled to Kings cross where we installed our second poster. We decided to install the Nature Valley one as it mirrored the advertisements around it. The idea that our work could be used as an advertisement was interesting to us. We put the poster up and then stood back and observed people interacting with it. Quite a few people looked at the piece as they exited the Tube, but not many people stopped to really take it which we kind of expected as the Tube is a very faced paced environment. Someone did come up to us and ask about the poster and we explained our project to her.

We next travelled to East London to install our remaining pieces. We decided on this location because of the incredible graffiti in this area. We walked to Brick Lane and installed the cheese string piece on a brick wall on Brick Lane. Here it was really busy and a lot of creative people frequent this area. After installing the piece, straight away people were looking at it as they walked past. A couple of people stopped to look and someone scanned the QR code that leads you to the website.

We put up our next poster on a graffiti wall in Brick Lane. We decided to install the 'Is it bad feng shui to sleep on the floor' poster because it contrasted the other posters on the wall well. On this wall were a lot of political pieces ranging from works about politics to protest pieces on trans rights. This was probably our most successful location as many people stopped to look at the wall due to its location. I would have loved to keep the posters up longer (especially this one) but unfortunately, we didn't bring anything to paste up the posters we were just using blu tack.

We walked back towards Liverpool Street station to install our next poster passing through Box Park which is where we installed the squashies poster. This one unfortunately didn't get much attention. I think we chose the wrong location for this one as it blended into the work around it and not many people were walking past.

In contrast, the location we chose for the next piece was perfect. This was a posh business area near Liverpool Street station and the poster we chose was the sexy matches one. We thought this would be quite humourous as lots of businessmen and posh people frequent this area. The poster has a more shocking effect here, which it wouldn't have in an area like Brick Lane for example."

25.04.2022

We managed to get a good amount of responses to our Google Form. The results were hugely diverse in subject matter, and most of them were pretty funny. I think that most people who submitted their search histories have curated their answers in order to seem entertaining. We have no way of knowing which responses are authentic or not, and I think that's okay. As we discuss our project, it is becoming more clear that the aim of this archive is going to be for entertainment purposes.

From a personal standpoint, I am finding it really educational to see the differences in how we interact with the web from these search results. The ways in which people spend their time online have changed since the mid-90s, and it's important for me to understand these differences in order to gain contextual awareness for my part 3 project.

Generally, Google is relied upon much more heavily for information now. Simple facts, instructions, and recipes are being sought online instead of sourced from books or magazines. This is a big difference that sets the Netscape 90s apart from browsers today. I also think that the internet is much more of a capitalistic landscape today. A huge fraction of the responses we received showed evidence of users on e-commerce sites buying goods/services. To my knowledge, the internet was not like this back in the day. Not that shopping wasn't available to internet users, but it definitely operated on a smaller scale and offered a much less convenient method of purchasing items than modern websites like Amazon. As a group, we filled out a form that helped us solidify the details of our project. The answers are as follows:

WHAT IS OUR COLLABORATIVE SUBJECT MATTER? (RESEARCH QUESTION)

"How can personal/ private escape interact with a public space?"

WHAT IS THE AIM OF OUR PROJECT? HOW WILL WE DESIGN FOR THE ARCHIVE?

Our project aims to bring people's private search history and make it public. Exposing something that is often hidden. We want to hopefully spark public reflection and conversation.

WHICH OF THE SIX SUGGESTED APPROACHES TO GROUP WORKING WILL WE UNDERTAKE?

An archive.

WHAT AMOUNT OF TIME WILL WE DESIGNATE TO THIS PROCESS?

Start with two working days and give ourselves more time if we need it. (Tuesday and Wednesday)

WHAT TECHNIQUES WILL WE USE TO GENERATE CONTENT?

Public survey, collage.

WHAT LOCATION OR SOURCES OF INFORMATION WILL WE USE?

Feedback from an anonymous survey, people submitted images of the last thing they searched.

During our progress tutorial with Lucy, we were recommended that the submissions not be changed from their original state. She stated that we will probably need more submissions for our archive to be effective and that we should create a sort of promotional scheme for our website/archive... We decided that the best way to do this would be through a series of posters.

After our tutorial, Kirsty quickly made a poster (not an outcome) to invite CSM students to submit their most recent search query. It quickly racked up screenshots on our Google Form, and I decided to spend my evening creating a draft of our archive in the form of a website. I used Cargo to do it and chronicle my CSS terror in the research section of this page.

21.04.2022

Today I met my collaborative group partners: Kirsty and Rose! Kirsty is in the illustration pathway and Rose is in PMI, which makes us an extremely well-rounded group in terms of specialty. Our realm of investigation is "Designing the Archive." We started off the class with a discussion of our project concepts... which led to us creating a diagram in order to determine where our work overlaps.

Here is a list of everyone's interests/concepts/media of choice.

KIRSTY

Interests: classics, women, history, feminism, literature, quotes, people forgotten, publication, politics
Skills: drawing/illustration, publication, painting, photography, printmaking
Overlaps w/ me: A Cyberfeminist Manifesto for the 21st Century by VNS Matrix, patriarchal perception of women (in both online & written history), forgotten people/traces of people of the past, books & WWW as escapism

ROSE

Interests: memory, the "skin" of objects, bench, public spaces, collection, the unseen, ambient sound, ephemeral, echo, age, reading folds in the skin of architecture like language, suspended in time, movement
Skills: making physical things, recording history, generating archival footage, videography
Overlaps w/ me: history and memory (is it reliable?), glitches and echo, public spaces (online vs. IRL), meaningful conversation vs. facade, internet & ephemeral

COMMONALITIES BETWEEN ALL OF OUR FOCUSES:

the void, escapism, rituals, being suspended in time, private space & public space

We determined that an essential concept that we all shared was TEMPORARY ESCAPISM. We also came up with a question that we would aim to answer in our project: How can a personal escape interact with public space?

We are interested in the idea of creating a space for people to escape or capitalizing on an existing escape-tactic in our work. Rose is particularly interested in installation art and designing an immersive experience. Both of these are realms that I have always wanted to explore. Blending my internet fascination with spatial design seems really exciting to me, although it's sort of a tall order considering the time we have to come up with an outcome. In looking at references to inform our work, R/PLACE, TONY OURSLER, and THE CONTEXTUAL SIGNIFICANCE OF GRAFFITI all came up.

Some sort of artwork that is created in collaboration with the public might be key to creating an effective outcome in just a few days. An interactive work would also make for a nice counterpoint to the work I have been producing in my part three project, which is largely about my personal experience with an outdated era of the internet.

In the afternoon, we narrowed down our project aim a bit into investigating search history. I plan on creating & sending out a Google Form to acquire some information about the general public's latest search query this weekend. In addition, I will gather some relevant sources to add to my collaborative research.

PART THREE COLLABORATE

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