For my final project on Security, I want to show how countries interrelate on many different levels as regular additions to a map that would be present in an atlas. I am talking about rivers, borders, roads, and mountains, including the use of different base colours.
This will be a piece of web art, obviously, created in Flash, and navigable like google maps, with a few differences. Zooming will be limited and there will be the ability to view different interrelations individually. Furthermore, there would be an idle state animation, and other extras to make this more interesting and put forward my intended artistic concept of security.
Important to me is that this work is not too literal. I will develop strategies to get around this, to make this piece a work of web art.



I want lines to be simple, smooth but layered too. This is a mockup of a basic image for my piece of web art.




Another example of a layer that could be present in my web art.

These images are low quality for very quick viewing. They are created with illustrator for easy importing to Flash. My aim is to create a piece of interesting art with simple yet effective imagery.

Security.

I am not sure yet what I want to show with my web art and design major project. I've had a bit of a browse through all the blogs, and it seems as though alot of people are taking quite a literal approach. I want my project to be very ambiguous, but the line is very fine between a piece that makes sense with the correct reading, and something that is just random for the sake of randomness.
I want to stick to the map aesthetic, and I really like the idea of user interaction building layers upon the map. It would be interesting to make the navigation like google maps, but im not sure how possible this is with flash (but I know it can be done with javascript).

I think that I would like to trace where government money goes internationally. Or, troop movement.I guess I still have to confirm this.

Image idea for final project

image concept, work in process. Very basic idea for the major project.

Concept: Flash animation to explore the security of the world. The red, blue and green lines when related to a map represent borders, roads, trains or rivers. In this project they will represent something to do with security, for example troop movements etc. Obviously the concept needs to be developed further.

wk 5 already

It is already week 5 and I feel like we have done nothing in this class. Ok, we have explored what web art is, but in the last class it seemed as though we were just talking about art.
I am supposed to be thinking about a concept for the final project, but we have had no guidance regarding it. I guess I'm lucky in that I have some experience with web based projects, but in this I feel I am unlucky because I have high expectations of myself and want to create something I am happy with.

I guess the difference between art and design is that design generally has a client, and a boundary set, whereas all of that is self imposed with art.

Secure Ideas

I was thinking about using graffiti as the backbone of this project. There is a big uproar about graffiti inciting worse crimes. Case in point: I heard a rumour recently about a hip hop shop in the city being shut down under the new sedition laws. The issue was that they were selling graffiti magazines which 'obviously' cause people to break the law. These laws were passed to protect Australians, to ensure our ongoing security, and sure graffiti can be illegal, but it also can be legal and commissioned.
I am trying to come up with a novel idea with which to attack this problem.
The issue is that mostly graffiti isnt really my style, and heaps more research is necessary. Just an idea.

Security.

The major assignment for this subject has not only a very broad topic, but its treatment seems to be anything digital. Im not sure if this is accurate, but the way I understand the assignment is that the final work just must be online, no other constraints.

Brainstorming security:
Internet security
home security
locks
security for a loan
security is a type of transferrable interest representing financial value.
surety
ease
assurance
insecurity
border security
self assurance/esteem

a lot in between.

The concept however must be deeper. More interesting.

Treatments:
html/javascript site
flash animation
interactive flash animation
processing
still images

At this point I would really like to be able to make use of RSS feeds to say something about security. I really like the aesthics of maps, also and I am entranced with travel so border security seems an obvious option. But in reality I would to explore the 'feelings' of the countries from news feeds and represent them accordingly.
What I am talking about is an artistic personification of security using maps or countries as a representation. But more on that later.

presentations.

I thought that I would post my thoughts on Wednesdays presentations here.
I think that the majority of the sites shown were well designed, but their intent was promotion, rather than art. Even the fact that the these promotional sites have to be beautiful, innovative and artistic to help sell the product, doesn't change the fact that their underlying point is marketing.
The jimpunk site seems to be the epitome of web art. The intent of the site must be art because there doesn't seem to be any other reason for it to be. Despite the fact that it is art I don't like its aesthetic, and its use of endless loops is inelegant and clunky.
All of this said, I think that it is very difficult to actually find what was required, so everybody did well. Except for one person from my class who used the same website as they did for a presentation last year on good use of concept and metaphor in design.

I had two other sites in the running to present, both of which would probably have satisified everybodies idea of web art, as they are interactive, dynamic, web based art. understandingvorn.org is a web based dynamic collage based on the letters v, o, r, n.
wefeelfine.org is a dynamic art piece that trawls weblogs and finds sentences that start with 'i feel', also listing the blog writers name and location. This affords an interesting social commentary on what is happening in the world. For instance, by exploring this site I know that its really hot in the U.S right now.
I presented mazenkerblog.blogspot.com because it affected me in a way that neither of these sites did.

In lieu of todays class I spent alot of time surfing the net, and i found a site that is art, and is also a blog.
http://mazenkerblog.blogspot.com/
Written, or more accurately drawn, by Mazen Kerbaj a Lebanese man in Beirut. Almost daily he posts small cartoon style drawings about his life since to the Israeli bombs started dropping. Re-iterated throughout is the proclamation that this blog is not political, it is art.

We fight for wefeelfine.org

So it has been decided that whoever gets chose next week first gets to use wefeelfine.org.
I think that this site should be considered art because it is an artistic exploration of the topic of modern technology/communication and how we use it. This site trawls through recent blog posts for sentences starting 'I feel...' or 'I'm feeling...' and displays them in relation to a set of different sized coloured balls animated on the screen. Someone argued that this was a psychological study as opposed to an artistic one, and I disagree. Were it presented differently and its content analaysed in some way then it could be classed as psychological, or even as a social commentary. As it is this work allows the user to draw their own conclusions about it.

In need of another site I have chosen understandingvorn.org which is made by the same person as wefeelfine.org, Jonothan J. Harris.