Dia Media

Comments Off … Radio Silence

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Drawing from my daily project where I draw first thing in the morning before turning my phone off.

I just turned comments off on this blog. If you want to get in touch use the contact page, or visit us at goodybank

No doubt I should, and likely will, simply re-direct this site at some point, but for now there *is* some trickle of juice, a smidgen of value that keeps me hanging on.

Also I want to transfer over some of that g0ogle juice over to the new site, once I find make the time. I wrote about time once or twice.

There is a brutal efficiency in just lopping off comments that is quite satisfying and helps literally retrieve time, by no longer moderating spam.

I’m going to write an article about what to do with old sites, re-design, re-align (hey wait I already wrote that in 2014!) but it’s 2019 baby and times have changed. Several projects have shown their fragility (2 clients, 3 ours) and I’ve noticed many sites in general that really need re-vamping, so I think the time is ripe to write about what to do when faced with the perils of obsolescence (also written in 2014). But tearing that bandaid off is hard. I know. That’s why this site is still here. For now.

Soon Come. Soon Come.

Text Neck & Fresh Perspectives

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Everyone time I see a senior citizen who is seriously bent over, I immediately roll my shoulders back, take a deep breath and look up. Now I’m noticing very young people with this same posture. This is anecdotally of course, but on the bus, the skytrain, walking sitting on a bench, in a cafe, restaurant…in short pretty much everywhere.

How will we evolve?

I imagine there has been a rise in massage therapist, physios, chiros, and other practictioners in treating folks with neck issues. I blame it all on the smartphone.

My monitor recently got fried. There was an electrical failure in the building, which is a designated heritage building (code for old and wonky) and right in the middle of a deadline….
[a post about leaving things too close to the deadline is for another moment]

Blink. No Fade. Just Black.

I had to adjust. There was a deadline. So I had to, gasp, use only my laptop.

My programmer tells me that what’s happened in an old and wonky electrical is that there are frequent minor power surges, and that zaps my fancy schmancy power surge protector, and gradually over time, it depletes the protector, until one day, kaput.

I haven’t yet purchased a new monitor.

Why? Besides time, research and all that jazz. Primarily because I’ve enjoyed experimenting with only using the relatively small screen, (a macbook pro retina) and adjusting the position depending on where I’m working. So at the studio it’s perched upon a clear stand, with and external keyboard plugged in, and here, at the pseudo-office, it’s on a bright pink laptop stand.

What I’ve noticed is three things:

  1. My neck feels better. I think it’s the variation of posture that the flexibility of where to sit with a laptop allows, brings more constant micro adjustments. The big monitor is big and usually just sits there in one position.
  2. My mental focus is a bit sharper. With the big screen, I have the luxury of multi-tasking, having many projects open. I can do that on the laptop, but the clutter gets a bit too much, so I start closing tabs down. I’m going to retain this as a habit.
  3.  Many websites are designed for big screens, even if they have a mobile friendly site. I was on the phone with a big company getting some support and they kept referring me to look in the upper right hand corner, but I couldn’t find the link they were pointing out. Eventually I realized that was because it was outside the viewport of my screen. And this was a big company, with lots of bucks to spend on mobile responsiveness…

I’m not going to delay the purchase of a big screen forever, it’s pretty much essential for coping with 156 layers in photoshop, etc etc. But for now it’s been a surprisingly welcome shift in my viewpoint. Also, it’s a good reminder to step back, raise my head up high and look at things with a fresh perspective, with less noise.

I’m welcoming fresh perspectives lately, in order to change, to be bored, to be un-bored, to shift, to develop better habits, or even to embrace some bad habits—it’s all about making, not judging.

“Nothing is a mistake. There’s no win and no fail, there’s only make.” —Corita Kent
(also attributed to John Cage, but he has enough press.) From “A List of Rules for Art Students”. Sister Corita Kenta, circa 1968

[P.S. I’ve done it too, texting while walking down the street, being mesmerized by the little screen. It’s a habit I’ve broken. I encourage you to do the same. And, it goes without saying, biking and texting (WTF?). Driving & texting is for _________< /endrant>]

Old Websites – Are They Obsolete or Not?

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What To Do With Old Websites – Retire or Realign…

A few years ago, a friend of mine announced she might retire as an artist, at the ripe old age of 36. Another friend back East made a similar pronouncement, although he was a few years older than her. Neither have retired, but both took a hiatus. I recently remembered their dramatic statements and started thinking about retirement of a different sort.

For just over 10 years, from 1999-2010 I was very active in the net-art community, producing dozens of art websites. If the lifespan of a website is akin to the doggie years metaphor (1 dog year = 7 human years ), then these sites are seriously out of date.  Last year, in 2012 I created a year-long daily photographic blog [The Obsolescence Project], considering things that were out of date, but I (gasp) used a free wordpress.com site and thus didn’t design the site, so I exclude it from these musings.

Currently I have about six public web projects that are still active online (there are more, but they were produced anonymously, which is another story, so they can choose their own blissful retirement). Almost all of the sites rely partially on Flash, some completely. Flash is basically obsolete. While not technically so, especially where compiled code (as opposed to visible html5 code) is desired, and for games, for projects I’m referring to it is done and dusted. Those sites just aren’t viewable on the iPhone, iPad and who knows where else. So I have to make a decision. Do I retire these sites completely – press delete – and leave documentation (screenshots/text) behind, or is there a way to re-align them with today’s contemporary web standards?

3 Case Studies:

  • pinch
    Screenshot from Excerpts From An Archive

    Excerpts from An Archive, 2001) is partly related to how one searched the web in 2001. Excerpts considers the nature of digital archives, history and fiction. Hand-coded with HTML using tables! At that time I used to get emails from folks asking me for information about their relatives – it was quite touching. The site only uses a wee bit of Flash, so it still hangs together. But it’s not mobile-responsive, it’s looks quite small – in those days you had to be quite conservative with images, dial-up internet might have even still be around, can’t remember.

  • Translations/Traductions
    Screen Shot of Translations/Traductions: L’Historia Mi Absolvera

    Translations/Traductions – produced as a result of a residency at La Chambre Blanche in Quebec City, a series of Flash vignettes created from open source archival movies and texts. Texts translated in google, imagery ‘translated’ (vectorized) in Flash. Blend of interactive and non-interactive animations. 2007 launch date. This one is all Flash – hence invisible on many (read Apple) mobile platforms (including the iPad).

  • Screen shot of Bird
    Screen shot of Bird

    Bird (2004) – A petit homage to Dizzy Gillespie + Charlie Bird Parker. This one is all Flash too. Looking back, I have a fondness for the effort that it took to create. The excerpt from the song repeats and the archival video that has been modified shifts each time. Does nostalgia merit a redesign?

STATUS PLAN

Excerpts from An Archive – This site gets a lot of traction. It has been featured in two books, one grad thesis, and various festivals. It merits a re-design/re-alignment to bring it up to speed. However, some of the little nifty (in 2001 terms) features that were part of it will just have to be lost. This also means a loss (which is already there) of some of the internal logic. C’est la vie.

Translations/Traductions: There are five animations which each are their own story. I still like them.
The non-interactive ones I will look at converting to video. The interactive ones, like the one I featured will, alas, have to stay as is. I don’t see how html5 can handle it all. Of course, I’m open to suggestion. Put up stills for those who can’t see Flash.

Bird: Given this one is all Flash, but non-interactive, it could easily be reborn as a video. The only loss would be the full scalability that the vector format allows. There would a gain too – in that viewers could pause to actually read the text that scrolls by, I didn’t fully recognize the speed then.

Should I stay or should I go

FINAL THOUGHTS

The three other still live sites I haven’t mentioned are probably going to shift towards documentation only, as their internal logic involved a process of getting input from the public and that process is done.

My rationale for choosing to resuscitate, to whatever degree, these sites has a lot to do with perceived value. Do I still think these works have any value to me as an artist? With the Archives, given that it is still out there, and receives active traffic, it’s not really a question of should, but of when and how.

For TT and Bird, it’s more of a personal reason – ie: I like them, they stay.

For the rest, if I had more time/energy/_______, I might revamp them. But probably it’s best to document, archive and let them gracefully fade away.

If you have old (or ancient) sites that you are wondering if they should be re-purposed for the “mobile web”, here are three questions to ask to help you decide:

  1. Does the site still receive any traffic?
  2. Does it still speak to the heart of your practice/business?
  3. What technologies does it use and how challenging would it be to migrate them?

If the answer to 1 is zero, it’s probably easiest to delete. It’s done, then it’s no longer clutter. Documentation is always a good idea (copy as text, or take screen shots).
If it’s yes, that’s a good hint to bring it up to speed.

If the answer to 2 is no, then I vote for document and delete. Again, why have stuff out there that is attracting people who are interested in content that is obsolete to you.
If it’s yes, that’s probably the most important reason to import it to a new format.

For number 3, technologies: Depending on the type of content, you’re either in for a fairly easy, smooth transition or in for a rocky ride if the content is video in some archaic format and you no longer have the original files (or the original files are no longer readable!) or if it uses Flash animations etc, then the amount of time it will take to re-format creeps up and up. Then you have to ask yourself if you really have the time / money / interest in this thing they call the mobile web.

p.s. Always document.

Create your own visual style... let it be unique for yourself and yet identifiable for others. —Orson Welles

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