Overall I have found Networked Meadia Production very enjoyable and interesting. I think that many people underestimate the power of the internet and networking, however this subject has taught me just how powerful and important the internet is today. Another good point about this unit is that everything we have learnt is very relevant to our generation, and as a young adult I can relate to the topics that we been taught.

Some of the things that we learnt about were quite complex, such as API’s, however, it shows just how limitless the internet is, and really anything is possible.

We also looked at some really great websites, my favourites were:

http://www.troika.uk.com/cloud - This is a sculpture in Heathrow Airport in London - I think its really amazing.

http://www.v1gallery.com/artist/show/3 - I love these photos, they demonstrate excellent photography skills and also just how much you can create when you have the right technology.

http://mugshots.tampabay.com/ - This website was really funny! I probably spent half the class looking through the mugshots. Yet while its entertaining, it is also pushing the boundaries of privacy, and it proves that the internet isnt always a good thing.

The internet is probably the most widely acessed media in the world as it has so much more information on it then the television and newspapers. It is also, amazing how pretty much anyone, anywhere in the world can see something that I created here in Canberra. Which makes me think….who has read this blog? I have freinds who have checked it out and the tutors as well obviously, but who else? For all I know a person in Alaska could be reading this each week, or perhaps no one (apart from university people) is reading it…

You really have to consider this when writing blog entries, because there isnt really a specific audience - the web is open to everyone, everywhere.

For my data visualization I used Last FM to record all the music that I listened to over a two week period.

This was my Las FM profile: http://www.last.fm/user/icedtea007

At first I was exactly sure what information to display, but then I decided on a pie chart to display the top five artists that I listened too. At the end of the two weeks, 50% of the songs I had listened to were by these five artists, and the other 50% was a whole range of various artists. To work all this out I had to add up all of the songs listed on Last FM, I found that I had listened to 1571 songs in total, so I could then work out percentages to make the pie chart. This was a fairly daunting process as I hav’ent really done any maths like this since high school!

I decided to use a vinyl record as the back drop for my data visualization, as I beleive that is is visually pleasing and obviously relates to music. When I drew each sector for the various artists I used the particular bands album and promotional art as inspiration. For example, there are lightning bolts in the Metallica sector. I drew the illustrations in Illustrator and placed the record behind them.

URL for my data visualisation:

http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/1270405/data-vis.jpg

- Online Exibition

- Online Exibition Rationale

- Data Visualisation

http://www.maxgadney.com/

This was really interesting, and he shows how he drew and designed everything :-)

http://www.last.fm/user/icedtea007

Now that I’ve set up my Last FM profile, so all my music is being automatically saved I’m now trying to concentrate on how exactly I’m going to display the information, and what the design should be like. Some of the examples of data visualisation that I’ve seen have awsome concepts and just seem like really SMART ideas, which is what I want to do, but right now I’m having trouble thinking of a strong concept.

I thought these examples from http://www.newsdesigner.com/archives/002152.php were great:

United States
Red: In favor of the war in Iraq
White: Against the war in Iraq
Blue: Don’t know where Iraq is

Colombia
Red: Exportation of bananas
Blue: Exportation of coffee
Yellow: Exportation of cocaine

There so simple but have such good concepts at the same time.

I’ve decided I will have a main image of the top 5 artists listened too, so I was thinking I could work out percentages, for example, 20% of the music was Green Day, 15% was Rise Against etc etc and 10% was “everything else”. Then I could make a pie graph, that actually looks like a record.

OR

I could draw pictures (probably in Illustrator) of band members, then I could enlarge/reduce the picture depending on how much I listened to that particular artist.

I also really like this data visualisation….

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/03/07/nyregion/20090307-nyc-poll.html

Its great how its interctive and easy to understand.

Ive finally decided that for the data visualisation I’m going to display information about what music I listen to. Ive signed up for LastFM so it will record what I listen to, then I was thinking of using graphs (but I’ll make them look nice!) and lists to display the info. I was thinking of using colours and images that match the music so it looks interesting :D

So far today the top bands have been…

Green Day - 20 plays

Rise Against - 18 plays

Metallica - 15 plays

Sum 41 - 13 plays

etc etc etc……………….

I was thinking of having some kind of illustration/graph thing to display the top five bands or songs, then other info around the edge…hopefully it will work!

The past few tutes have been pretty interesting!

Its good to just look at random things on the internet and its amazing what some people can create, now that the internet has advanced so much. But I also wonder if these people have too much time on there hands, I thought the video game with the 1000 cars was awsome…but the person who did it must have ALOT of spare time!

The Tampa Bay Mugshots were hilarious. And the Feltron Annual Report has given me a few ideas for our next project.

Speaking of which….

Im not really sure whether to do the Google Maps one or the Data Visualization one. I think if I actually remembered to record stuff then the Data Visualistion one could be cool. Eg: songs I listened to, number of stairs I walked up, Number of cups of coffee per day, number of Gossip Girl episodes watched….but being the forgetful preson that I am, attempting to do this may turn out to be an epic failure. If I found an interesting topic then the Google Maps option could work…but finding info and photos etc could be a challenge especially with copyright issues!!!

ps how cool is gmabit :-)

I did my online exhibition on Hampton Court Palace. I chose this because it is a topic that I find very interesting and I think that Hampton Court is a significant part of history that is still culturally important today. I also think that Hampton Court is fairly relevant to my course (Graphic Design) since I think that it is important to understand what was designed in the past, and its interesting to learn about where Hampton Court fit into the cultural landscape and which design movements influenced it. I am also currently doing a subject called “Design History” which discusses a lot of things similar to the palace.
I used to live in London, near Hampton Court so I actually had quite a few of my own photos from there, and there were a number on the Internet, which were under Creative Commons licences. Therefore it was no problem finding photos to support the information that I had gathered. I also think that Hampton Court Palace, is a good sized topic - not to broad but not to small, so there was plenty of information on it - but not so much that it would be impossible to work out exactly what to write.

Process
The first thing I did was gather up my own photos from the palace, these were taken on a film SLR camera a while ago, however when I scanned them in they were still really great quality! I then worked out what exactly I wanted to talk about, so I divided the subject into a few different subjects - Introduction, History, The Tudor Kitchens and The Palace Gardens. The introduction was a brief summary of the palace, so even if you didn’t know anything about it the summary could give the reader a basic idea. Then the history was a fairly detailed account of the background of the palace, when it was built (it was built in a number of different stages), the style of the palace (gothic, Tudor, renaissance and baroque) and who lived there (King Henry VIII etc).  I thought the Tudor kitchens were a really interesting aspect of the palace, because they are actually a very popular attraction, and learning about the kitchens gives you an idea of what kind of life the residents of Hampton Court lived. The grounds are also a huge aspect of the palace, and since they were heavily designed, the gardens are an important aspect of the history of design. I then found a lot of really great images on Flickr to back up the information.

I set up a new blog on Tumblr, so then once I had written everything out and gathered the pictures I put them all into blog posts. I used the “museum theme” for my blog, as I think that it’s very simple, yet effective, way of organising and displaying information. The black, red, white and grey colours look sleek and don’t interfere with the content of the blog. I also really like how the museum theme looks more like a proper website and less like a blog. I then changed the dates of each blog post so that they would appear in the right order. I had four text posts, which also had a few images in them. And four posts with just images and there captions. I really love how the museum theme crops the images to a square so that they are all the same size, but then you can click on them to see the full image in a new window.

Overall, I am very happy with my online exhibition. At first I was quite unsure of exactly what was expected of us in this assignment, however now I am quite proud of my work, and hopefully other people will enjoy it as well.