I know I haven’t blogged all semester, that’s because I’ve been working on a single project, that’s due tomorrow. It’s not done yet, but here is a video demonstration of how it works.

This is the final version of the stop motion video I’ve been working on for the past month or two. Enjoy!

so the site is up and running, it’s been presented, and i can go home and sleep!

but here are my details:

SID: 307198235

email: christine@christinelam.com

I have been part of a group creating a multitouch interface to display news over the past few weeks. We haven’t quite made it yet, but you can look at our documentation here.
But the most interesting thing we have to show for it now is a hi-fi prototype. Enjoy!

While looking through the MoMA (Museum of Contemporary Art) website, I came across a website that particularly captured my attention. It is nothing like the website that I have created in this course, but it is smooth and sleek, and reminded me of a project that I’m currently working on in another subject.
In “Colour Chart“. This artwork represents the works of artists who use a broad range of colours, and presents all this work in a sleek display where everything is based on a spectrum of colours.

When I first entered the site, I was very impressed by the colour and layout of the pages. It was sleek, sophisticated, vibrant and seemingly intuitive. The large size of the flash file the website is built on is masked by a very interesting sequence full of colour and form, and almost didn’t realise it was waiting for the page to load.

The pages seemed easy to navigate around, in that there was always a logical way of presenting links to the user. At the splash page, there were bubbles which asked me if i wanted to view works by artist, medium or timeline. Any of these links would link me to a flash page with fancy continual rollovers and clicking on those links would bring up an image of the artwork. All this is aesthetically pleasing, and they all form visual spectrums, fitting in with the theme of colour in the website.

Although aesthetically pleasing, I was actually disappointed in this website. I’m aware this is more of an artwork than a search engine, but I found it quite difficult to navigate around the page. There was no hierachy in the website, all the pages were one level down from the splash page, meaning you could end up pretty much anywhere with a single mouse click.

I thought that although there had been a large amount of design and planning in this website, it was still primarily an art project. The visual aesthetic worked well, and the rollovers really brought the website together. All the pages worked well by themesleves, but the only thing connecting all the pages was visual aesthetic rather than having a function and purpose.

It’s now the end of the semester and looking back on my blog, it’s alot emptier than I had hoped to be. Due to factors such as focussing my time on core subjects and mostly working on the projects on public transport and other places where I had no internet connection, I’ve decided to put up a massive post documenting the progress on my final assignment.

The concept behind my final project has warped alot over the course of time. I have two types of images that appeal to me – sleek and minimal vs over the top layering of images. To portray the idea of initially, I had the idea of implementing an infinite flash loop incorporating photographs that I had taken, and then having them link to other page with particular aspects of my life.

This looked really good in the mockup, but then I thought to myself about how much fun that would be to play with – It’s pretty much just my portfolio.
I wasn’t happy with that minimalist idea, but I really wanted to use photos that I had taken, due to my large interest in photography. What I came up with was a set of random pages which all incorporate numerous photos or artworks that I have made in the past and created animated effects from. Within all these pages, I wanted to have a recurring theme, but I only wanted to apply it loosely. I wanted something more messy and chaotic, and didn’t want to use text.

After looking through several hard drives worth of photos, I chose a selection of images I liked and had a better look at them. I took a not to choose pictures that were quite out of the ordinary. I had a few ideas going one I had found some pictures I liked – many of them were figures, whether it be of people or of animals so I thought I may be able to create a series of pages where gestures are included in the animation. I also thought about emphasising things that weren’t quite right, but the idea evolved onto taking regular pictures and manipulating the photos to make it not seem quite right.
I took a few pictures of me taken a few years back and thought I’d make an animation out of them, just to see what it looked like.

I really liked the gesturing here, but I still didn’t really know what to do in the final wesite.

I was thinking back to the assessment task we had where we had to make webpages with rollovers and animated gifs when I really became inspired – to create strange worlds where regular objects are in. I thought it would be fun if I just made a series of webpages where there there were rollover images which alter the form of an image simulating a gesture. I then thought to make them link to eachother randomly just to make sure there was no structure in the website. I don’t know how much I stuck to this idea, but if all else fails, this project can still be seen as identity because I took all the photos and I applied effects that I like on the photos, so it’s still the world ‘through my eyes’
Here are a few of the images that I’ve gone through.







and to show it all working, i uploaded it all!
http://christinelam.com/identity/

Here is a later edit of my stop motion video. I’ve decided to alter this by taking out the video footage and only using still images.

This is just a funny little page I put together with animations and mouse-overs and the like.
I’m hoping to extend from this in the final project – I didn’t realise until this week how close to the end of semester we were…

christinelam.com/geisha

I like the concept of having something presented, that isn’t quite right.

here is a little animation i made of me playing the guitar. i’m thinking of using animated gestures in my final work.