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.