Swedile in the Classroom #6 - Annotated Bibliography

1. DeviantArt
http://www.deviantart.com/

I’m starting with DeviantArt (a.k.a. “dA”) because this is the most well known art community website, with over 8,000,000 users to its name. Users have all sorts of options open to them; they can post art, journal entries, polls, comments and so on, and they can watch other artists, and DeviantArt will alert you when those artists have updated with art, journals, or comments to you. Further, you can add other people’s artwork to your “favorites” gallery, so you can always browse your favorite art.

The way the website is put together is rather simple to follow, given a little time to get used to it. One aspect that is very useful is that the menu bar up at the very top never changes or moves. From anywhere in the site, you can click to go back to the main page, or back to your individual gallery page, or browse for any given topic, and check your messages. Also, galleries are all formatted roughly the same way, so that one never has trouble finding someone’s gallery, favorites, journal, etc. Even comments are done in such a way that it’s clear who is talking to who (when you reply to a comment, your comment becomes indented over a little bit, and any comments made after that one are also indented, so keeping track of a conversation is simple). Overall, the navigation of the site is designed to be very natural and easy to use.

Lastly, the site’s overall design is very monochromatic. The colors of the site range from white to a grayish beige color. The question has been raised in class as to why do so many art-themed sites seem to be designed with very little color. I think this is a case of smart design; when the website showcases art, the site itself can’t be too colorful, or else the reader will find it difficult to tell the difference between the art and the site. When sites like DeviantArt choose a color scheme that is very drab, it’s actually a rather smart way to draw the attention to the art itself, and to make the art, navigation, and the website design separate. In as much, DeviantArt succeeds where a lot of other sites fail.

2. TegakiE
http://www.unowen.net/tegaki/index.php

TegakiE’s content differs from the majority of art community websites; instead of uploading an already-completed picture onto the site, you draw directly onto TegakiE with a tablet. This sort of interface is commonly known as ‘oekaki,’ which is the Japanese word for ‘doodle.’

In regards to website design, it suffers visually for being far too drab and simple. It’s merely a white background with Times New Roman font for the links, the only color besides the art itself are the ads. Also, the navigation is somewhat tricky in that while the menu never moves from the right hand side, the options often change depending on what kind of page you choose. This can make it very hard to navigate, especially when you’re new to the site. It gives the impression of being a very amateur website, which is a shame, because it’s really very innovative in other ways.
One major way is the way the community interacts. There’s almost no typing involved in the site; you pretty much literally draw everything. The most interesting example is the comment system. Under each finished drawing is a small canvas box that acts just like the area you draw your entries on (except smaller). People draw their comments instead of write them, and they can do pretty interesting things with this technology. Whereas on a site like DeviantArt, the art never expands or changes beyond the finished submitted piece, while here, other members can add on to the drawings, or bring a new dimension to it, or even start a narrative. Thus, TegakiE is an artist community in a much more interactive sense, where each artist can add something to any piece of art and help to create something new.

3. iScribble
http://www.iscribble.net/

iScribble is another oekaki-style website, where artists can join group drawings and all draw on the same canvas in real time. A user logs in and enters a chat room, usually with a theme like playing a certain game or drawing a certain subject, and you can chat while drawing with others at the same time. It’s a step further in the collaborative art interaction that I mentioned above. It’s like an electronic version of doodling on a fellow artist’s sketchbook.

Sadly, as much as the content of iScribble is amazing, the website design is proportionally awful. The home page is a wall of text with little icons and ads and a list of users currently online. The link to enter the site is hidden in this text near the top of the page. This first click leads to a login page, where you log in and then click to go forward, and assuming the site does not have an error logging in, you’re brought to another page full of text. It is only when you click the text boxes on the right of the screen that you are finally in view of any actual art at all. This takes far too long, and will cause lots of first time browsers to lose interest in the site and move on, which is a shame considering what you can do there.

Furthermore, apparently the site also allows for individual artists to upload pieces they did on their own. However, according to their FAQ page, new users can’t upload their own images. They require more veteran members to upload the images for you. You’re also not allowed to use options like “undo” until you’ve proven to the site administrators that you’re serious about the site. This is just an awful idea. It discourages a lot of people away from the site, and considering their revenue comes from advertisers (considering ads are snuck in so sneakily around the whole website), I have no idea why they would scare away people who would see the ads, raising the amount of money they can ask for. The whole website is designed poorly, and their actions seem counterintuitive to their own interests. It’s a shame that such a neat art program is buried in this mess.

4. SheezyArt
http://www.sheezyart.com/

SheezyArt is just one of a great deal of art community websites that has chosen to adopt, more or less, the DeviantArt style, making it basically a carbon copy. Like dA, you can upload pictures, make comments, add favorites, and so on.

However, in attempting to replicate DeviantArt’s success, the site comes off as amateurish. They move certain things, like the menu bar, into different areas as to not come off as looking too much like dA, but this takes away somewhat from the natural placement of the menu bar in the top left corner of the website as on dA, since people tend to start looking in that quadrant of a website. They also move the user icons in comments from one side to the other for no real reason (and they abandon the comment indentation concept in the process). The overall layout of DeviantArt gives it an impression of being very open and expansive, but somehow this site feels very closed off and lonely.

However, it does have an interesting feature over dA in the form of personalized gallery homepages. While everyone’s gallery page in dA shares the same drab color scheme as the rest of the website, with some room for personalization to subscribers (they can alter the appearance of their journal), SheezyArt is capable of altering the appearance of the whole page; specialized backgrounds, textured textboxes, background music, etc. However, despite this slight innovation, SheezyArt comes off as a pale imitation of the much more successful DeviantArt, and is rather a waste of time.

5. The Computer Graphics Society
http://www.cgsociety.org/

The Computer Graphics Society (or “CGSociety”) is a community intended for more professional/serious artists. Unlike DeviantArt or the others, where anyone can join at any time for free, CGSociety is devoted to artists in the field of digital imagery and such. The site offers industry news, and feature stories about successes in the field (such as a feature on the Pixar short “Presto”) that are very well put together. There’s even an option for artists to upload their own work to be seriously critiqued by their colleagues in the field. It is, however, in this department that the site begins to fail.

The format this site chose was that of a message board. The kind of message board found all over the Internet. I feel this is a severe misuse of talent. This website looks very nice; clearly, a lot of time and money has been put into it. This is a website populated entirely by people working in the medium of computers. I find it hard to believe that the best method they could come up with to showcase art is a message board. It’s unbecoming of the community’s talent to use such a method. It’s a shame too, because a lot of the art is incredible. But to post it, an artist has to upload it through a third-party hosting site like Photobucket, and then copy the link into the post. People can comment, but no one can add it to favorites or do anything unique with it. It seems like a very impractical method for a professional art site to adopt. A community like that could do so much better.

6. ConceptArt.org
http://www.conceptart.org/

ConceptArt.org is another site that focuses heavily on the serious/professional art community, where members are often studying art or working in that field, and post seeking serious feedback from serious artists.

This site is more like the sort of professional community I’d imagine would look like; the site design is stunning, with interesting yet muted backgrounds, drab colors that aren’t too monotone, instead connoting a more earthy feel, and users artwork on the front page in small thumbnails, arranged in a mosaic style. It highlights the artwork while looking good in its own way. A very impressive format overall.

Sadly, this site, too, uses a forum interface for most of the postings, but it comes out better than the CGSociety’s forum. The menu bar remains at the top perpetually, and this menu bar includes the mosaic artwork display, so the forum looks almost like a part of the site, instead of feeling like you were redirected to a forum. Also, instead of individual topics being opened for each and every piece of art, here they are divided into categories (like finished work vs. sketches), and an individual starts each topic, and he or she puts all their art from that category into that topic, updating it with new work as they go. So for an art website that uses a basic forum interface, they’ve adapted it well to their audience.

Besides this, there is still a more traditional “gallery” application, where each of the thumbnails in the mosaic link. So for those who prefer the forum, that exists for them, and seems to be in the most use. For those who prefer a gallery interface, that too exists for them. This site is an example of a true artist community; by artists, for artists, made by artists, and populated by artists.

7. Elfwood
http://www.elfwood.com/

Elfwood is a little different from the rest of the sites in that it is based very heavily on a theme, or particular subject of art; in this case, fantasy and science fiction. It operates much like DeviantArt; you can upload pictures and writings, people comment, you can browse other art, etc, all the while not mimicking dA’s web design. The only difference is that that you’re only allowed to upload things that pertain to fantasy or sci-fi.

The navigation is fairly good. The menu bar remains forever on the left side of the screen, and when you click on an option, it takes you to the page, but a submenu appears underneath the selected menu option. For example, if you selected “Rules,” extra options will appear underneath with specialized options within the “rules” category, such as “10 Commonly Sense Rules.” The overall layout and design likewise remains the same throughout. The only real issue I have with the site is it is yet another forum-based art community, but I’ve already spoken at length about the subject, and seeing as this website seems to be more low-budget than CGSociety or ConceptArt.org, it is more passable as an issue.

Where the site really shines is in its visual language. Everything about the colors and textures on this site combine and connote the feeling of a fantasy realm where knights fight dragons and there are damsels to be saved. The background is a stone texture; the menu options to the right are written on what look like wooden planks; thumbnails of stories appear on papyrus scrolls; even the title font is a calligraphy style reminiscent of the middle ages. Anyone visiting the site for the first time would suffer from no confusion as to what the site is about. This is the sort of imaginative web design I spoke of earlier with the previous entries; the designers of this site really knew how to speak to their users.

8. 4Chan
http://www.4chan.org/

This is an entirely different sort of “art community” than I’ve discussed before. It’s not so much an “art” community than it is a community of random silliness and the place where Internet memes (running jokes, basically) are born. However, it does post images, and users do have a sort of community, so here it goes.

The overall design of the website is actually very simple. The front page is divided into sections like “What is 4Chan,” “Boards,” and “Recent Posts,” and each one is color coded with a tinted white background. This color-coding makes an otherwise daunting wall of text easier to read. Also, the glut of images that make it onto 4chan daily are divided by categories (video games, anime, nature, photography, and much more), which also makes navigation somewhat easier. However, this is where the positives of the site end.

While some sites are denounced for their wall of text, this site is pretty much a wall of images. While it is true that they are divided into categories, the sheer magnitude of posts make it impossible to organize, and browsing consists of just going through post after post after post. The comment system is also unattractive to the eye, looking like they orbit the photo, jutting out in strange ways, to make following it coherently a small job, instead of being natural.

The worst thing about the site is that anyone can come on and upload any image they choose. Any. A large majority of the posts made are not work of the posters, but rather taken or stolen from somewhere. I’ve seen dozens of art originating from DeviantArt end up on the site, likely not posted by the original artist. 4Chan isn’t a community in the sense of it being populated by like-minded people who come together and share their work. They just post whatever they want, taking other’s hard work and exploiting it. 4Chan is the epitome of bad art communities, and it’s not worth anyone’s time.

- Chris Muise

Swedile in the Classroom #5 – Is Google the Second Language?

In regards to Robert K. Logan’s essay “Making sense of the visual – is Google the seventh language,” I feel I must mention something I’m usually reticent to voice when I read other articles (in keeping with the idiom “remain silent and be thought a fool; open your mouth and remove all doubt”): This guy’s writing is pretty bad. I mean, it’s not incoherently bad, but it is clear that somewhere along the line it was not edited or peer reviewed. Slight grammatical errors abound and punctuation is missing. There are at least a few sentences like this one, where it seems he restarted mid-sentence: “There is another project at the University of Toronto there is a project exploring the economic feasibility of using a robotic page turning device to digitize books.” It boggles the mind (no, it “googles the mind” – man, how corny) that someone who is not only trained in English, but is actually writing about language, could not notice such glaring errors.

But enough about Mr. Logan’s poor writing in this particular example; let’s get to the meat of the paper. He claims that Google has become the 7th language (the previous six being speech, writing, math, science, computing, and the Internet), in that search engines have their own set of syntax and semantics. I’m not entirely sure I agree with this, mainly on the grounds that he does not differentiate between the Internet and Google. The criteria he gives for being a new language is that it has the compendium of pretty much all human thought and knowledge is Google’s semantics, and its “search grammar” as its syntax. But the Internet itself has this same complete world knowledge, and Google is merely an extension of the Internet; it is part of it. Logan never really provides the syntax of the Internet, so can we assume that it is similar, if not identical, to that of the Search Engine? I think Logan may have jumped the gun here in calling Google the seventh language.

However, he did bring up something interesting I would like to address. He mentions that before hominids became verbal (in the sense that they began to use a language of some sort), we relied on what he calls “mimetic communication,” which consists of facial expressions and grunts, screams, and other sounds that aren’t words. We still use this form of communication, but in conjunction with words, which enhance the two together. However, when writing, a lot of this mimetic language gets lost by virtue of the fact that we remove the direct human interaction from the equation. But in recent years, electronic media has allowed, almost spontaneously, for this to resurface in text. I am, of course, referring to the emoticon =D. By adding little representative glyphs to our text in things like instant messaging and emails, we add a whole new element of communication that was not there before. Take for example this passage:

Ok, sure, do what you want.
That single line could be taken many different ways, given the context. But by adding just a few extra keystrokes…

Ok, sure, do what you want >:(
…it’s become painfully evident that I’m mad about something, and the whole meaning of the text changes. These emoticons allow us to regain in textual communication what we had lost before; body language can, at least rudimentarily, be recorded in text. Whether this evolves into the true “seventh language,” I don’t know. But we’ll certainly see.

- Chris Muise