Visual Experimentation with Identity Images

Flash File

This is just an experimentation of the combining the identity images and looking which one works best to my concept.
Is it better to cut up the images and using the flash file, the user can interact and view the whole image when they mouse over it. With such a simple technique there is another unique identity created.
or is it better to combine them by manipulating the images? and another unique identity is created.

New Project Concept

So I've decided to go to the online collective art direction, where the perspective of identity is not from me, but from various artists around the globe. Similar to wefeelfine.org, where it collects sentences with the keyword 'feel' and organise them according to feelings, gender, location, etc. The new concept is to collect works of art, with the keyword 'identity'. They are then organised into different visual category and then broken down into individual artists and their interpretations of 'identity'.

Collective Art

My project concept is looking at the multiple identities of a person in terms of relationships (look at my previous post). It doesn't have anything to do with the idea of collective art.

However, the idea of an online collaborative art is actually quite good, so I decided to do a little research about it and found a few articles about it.

Online Collaborative Art and Art Mobs which talks about the use of the world wide web technology of creating artworks compiled from people all around the world and whether it works.

the 'Art Mobs' article talks about how collaborative art works well with alphabets, but so much with complex images or pictures. This is probably because of the different perspectives of images from different people. For example from my previous post about collective art, 'the smaller pictures', simpler images such as a 'heart', which has one common symbol that is internationally known, works better than a 'telephone', which has multiple icons representing it.

From researching about collaborative arts, I found that the most successful ones are the ones that are controlled. The Bluesfear Worm is one example of this, where each artist registered themselves in order to be able to contribute to the 'worm'. Another successful artwork similar to the 'Bluesfear Worm', taking it to another level, is the Zoomquilt1 and Zoomquilt2. I suggest that you view the flash file. The first time I looked at the flash file, I couldn't figure out how each person contributes their images. However, If you click on one of the participant's image, you'll see how it's done.

Project Concept

My project concept is based around the idea of multiple identities within one person. As it is said from the class blog,

"Identity: set of attributes that allow to recognize a person or set of persons
as unique or distinct. Key variables: distinction, uniqueness"

So the concept deals with multiple identities in terms of relationships. The subtle differences in behaviour which a person has around different people, whether conscious or unconscious, makes that person distinct and unique to that one particular group. It is not about being fake, but about the natural human behaviour that we act that way.

The image above shows a simple concept of multiple identities that makes up one person. The whole image is an identity itself, known only to the person. It is then divided into small sections, which represents different groups of people.

My idea is to make the image as a whole, so that when people see it, they wouldn't know straight away that it's made up of different things. Therefore, once they lean closer and look at it properly they would realise the subtle difference. (much like the graphic worm in my previous post)

The image above shows the person's identity in that smaller sections. With each section known only to one particular group, of what and how other people identify that person, when in fact it is only a part of them, and they don't really know the whole identity of the person.

It is like if I ask the question of "Who Am I?", the answer would differ, depending on who you ask and what am I doing.

So then comes the question of what happens if they clash? would it be a confusion or a discovery? maybe also do digital identity as a part?

How this all ties to my website, I am thinking of flash or animation, maybe each section actually has an image as a whole, and that image would 'morph' from one to the other. or maybe just an animation of the image, which randomly display parts of the identities. And once you click on it, it brings you to another page, which describe that part of identity, and how it relates to the visual representation?

Week 5 Exercise

This exercise asked us to create an image using Photoshop which reflects our concept of identity. We had 30 minutes to create the image and switch over with another person and let them finish.

Before


After

Collective Art

Looking at the Bluesfear Worm, I found this other site, The Smaller Picture, which experiments with collective internet users attempting to create an artwork. There are a few images which actually achieve their goals, others are just random pixelated images.

It's really cool how you can contribute to this and how you could also see the animation of the image in progress. These are few of the recognisable ones:

Following up on the links given by the site, the SwarmSketch and the Collective Type Project.

The Collective Type Project is almost similar with the exercise we did in the first week, this project combines 255 images of the same letter into one image.

The Official Bluesfear Worm

Looking through various sites which have cool flash navigation systems, I was thinking, yes sure it has a nice effect and engages the user, but it’s just one of those websites which has a unique navigation system. And after looking through those sites, I ended up choosing this site to critique. The Official Bluesfear Worm, which has nothing to do with flash navigation system, but unique in its own way.

So far, the Official Bluesfear Worm consists of 119 images created by 75 artists. It is called a digital art worm, or graphics worm. Each artist is to create a digital image, probably around 600 x 450 pixels and each image had to continue the previous image done by another artist. The result being one super long graphic art internet page, horizontally.

I guess this particular page of the graphics worm falls under art instead of design because it challenges each graphic artist to come up with a digital image which takes up the style of the previous artist and turns it into their own style of art. This graphics worm is showing all the different styles of various artists, with each image revealing a little bit about the artist’s identity. However, as it is constantly continual from each artwork to the other, we can’t help but think of them as a whole. If we take out the artists names at the bottom of the images, no one would have guessed that it is the work of various artists. In a way, their identities are taken out where the different styles became one artwork.

Because of this unique design of the page, it doesn’t really relate to other art forms on the web, however, it might fall into the category of ‘community art’ where various artists all around the world contribute to the site. Looking at my previous post about the redbubble site, another community art site where the artists are challenged against each other to produce the best digital image for particular themes. The graphics worm has no theme whatsoever; however they do have two rules, which are: “The image must look complete and the tween (In-between) must be (close to) unnoticeable”.

How this may reflect to my own project, I am still not sure because until now I still don’t have a full idea about my concept; however, I might do it around the idea of split identities, between individual relationships or digital identities. When I say ‘split’ identities, I don’t mean it in an extreme way, but just subtle differences between two or more identities that a person has, which he/she may unconsciously have. Therefore these ‘split’ identities made the person as a whole. This could be done by doing a few digital images, each representing the different identities that may come up from one person, and tweening them into one.

I guess you could say that the Bluesfear Worm is a little bit of an inspiration for my final project, where I am combining the different identities to make up one person. However, because I am only taking the concept of individuality and wholeness from the site, my actual final project would be completely different in terms of design, style or layout. With enough time and if I have the skills, I am hoping to be able to play with the images and combining them with CSS and/or flash animation.

Identity and Relationships

Reading from the main blog, I did have some ideas about identity in terms of relationships. Somehow it is similar to having a digital identity where people only show a part of themselves towards a particular group of people. For some people, they don't mix family and friends. Not that they don't want to, it just happens to be that way. Naturally, even though they are being themselves around each group, they could be unconsciously behaving differently.

An interesting thought just came through... What happens then if they lost their memory? They'd have to depend on their family and friends to reconstruct their identity? Or is identity something that is naturally within you?

This reminds me of an American comedy "Samantha Who?", where the main character, "Sam" had an amnesia after an accident. As she tries to find out about her past, she discovered that she was a horrible person and now attempts to reboot her life to instead become the "good" Sam.

I was looking for some example art that contains the theme 'identity', and I found this website http://www.redbubble.com/ which holds themed challenges to artists worldwide, and their work are ranked by votes.

These are some examples of the 1st place works.

Lost Identity - Imber

(#1 in Le Masquerade and #1 in Broken)

An Incident Involving Four Bottles - AJM Photography

(#1 in Bottles, bottles, CAPS)

What Friends Are For - Kyrstie Kyle Photography
(#1 in Wackily Weird)

Self Portraiture - Limitless - Anthony Young
(#1 in Jump)

And here I just wanted to share a link to an amazing papercut artist: http://www.petercallesen.com

Identity and Personality

I am very much struggling with the concept of the project about Identity.

What is Identity? When I first thought of this, does it relate to personality? What is the difference between personality and identity? I guess identity is who you are and personality is what you are.

Personality is your character, your persona, the quality of a person, whether they are humorous or intelligent. It is what makes you you and sometimes they are really difficult to change. On the other hand, identity is somehow easier to be changed. You could easily change your name, change your look. Identity is kind of a proof to the world about your name, look, age or nationality, but it doesn't tell other people what you are like.

So within this project, through my understanding of 'identity', I'm quite confused whether we are actually doing identity or personality. Or are those two very much related, like art and design?

Then there is the difference between real identity and digital identity. Real identity is pretty simple, it's who you are in real life. Digital Identity refers to the use of the internet, using social network websites, such as Facebook or Myspace, people could modify their identity or even create a whole new one. In digital identity, people seem to present themselves in the best way possible, for example, only uploading the best photos of their holidays and maybe also retouching them. Where as in the real life, what you see is what you get.

I need to think more about this and how I can take it to the next level as my concept.

Week 2 - Web Art and Design

Today's activities: creating a new blog, discussion about identity, art and design, tutorial on html, dreamweaver introduction.

I wouldn't say that I'm good at dreamweaver, but I pretty much know the basics. I've never used tables for layouts before, so that's new, but not something that I wouldn't be able to learn and find out by myself. The one I'm interested in is CSS layouts, used it before for my last year's elective. Tried to self-teach myself about CSS, very VERY confusing in the beginning, and still confusing in the end. Somehow I got lucky that I pulled it off in the end, through trials and errors.

see it for yourself: http://web.arch.usyd.edu.au/~vcip2579/deco2102/home/
a very simple layout, but the heading and the writting going down on the right side is what makes it tricky in the beginning. I guess even though it's way harder than using tables, once you got it working, it's a lot less work, since you can use and link one style for the whole site, which makes it much easier to edit.