VCT - Websites

Lesson Aims:
- We started to talk broadly about web media and then pre web media. It’s hard to understand the characteristics of new media because it is current, easier to understand old media.

- “New media” - There is always a new media i.e pencil, biro (they was once a new media)

Thinking about the switch from old media to new media -Web 2.0 (Name suggests a evolution) i.e - Kill Bill 2

Web 1.0


Thinking about the term metaphors: Terms as a old world (i.e desktop) comes from the printed era.
- What happens when they no longer make sense to use in the digital world?



The photograph above show networks of . This is a electric grid - Modern City
At night what is hidden in the day becomes visible . Life is transformed by grids of lights. Technology transforms our lies. (Before lights we wouldn't go out at night really).



Lots of adverts in buildings. The Mercedes poster is large scale. The image is bout physically distance, depending on scale. The cross intersections on road resemble the web.
In the web this called HUB or NODE (Where traffic flows through or congregates).

The Internet is a mass of digital flows & conversations, myspace/facebook are hubs = meeting points

The Internet is a abstract idea - it's a idea
MAP IS A INVENTION NO A RECORD


QUESTION: How might a reals pace & unreal space come together in LA?
- Films / The Sims



Printing & Communication (New name) - Suggests we do other things other then printing
Shift - Moving away from something physical - Shift from hand production.
Visual Communication - Emphasis is on flow of information to hep us make sense of the world.

Designers like visual narratives
Graphic Designers tend to use metaphorical metaphors

There are print & analogue metaphors - Desktop / Folders / Files (user centered design- they are more natural for you to use).

> We most often attach ourselves to objects of the past



The above image suggests technology as extension of the brain. Connectivity
Future progress - Left > Right


New Technologies - Web 2.0 : The Social Web

Content is generated by users / Congregation of communication
i.e - TV News sometimes is user generated - debates

- The Web 2.0 is called user to user rather than one to many
We need new metaphors



This change affects the way we design, The Internet means network integrated or points between

Outlook / Safari / Explorer / Surfer - Shift from office metaphor - Suggest escape,

However we create the internet therefore the explorer metaphor is a lie!

The Web is spatial navigation, When you try to convey this in printed matter it doesn't work.




Question: If you have a metaphor what does it allow in thinking, but also what does it disable?

The digital flow controls us: i.e scanning a passport, the information is only relevant in a certain time or place



The Vital signs illustrates that the web is a open source, a world that is uncertain.

http://www.modernista.com/7/index.php



If information is unstable do you tame it? Or does your design allow it to be unstable?

Sources: Kevina City Wise- The Image of the City / Habermas Gaphic design Eye Mag 2005
On the Invention of the Public Sphere

Thank you to Monika Parrinder for the great talk!