MX: Reading Response

Thinking about the web in the context of the history of media and the transmission of ideas was important in establishing its purpose, as well as its implications. The realization that anything created on the web (and perhaps this is true for anything created, period) carries inherent vestiges of the past was more or less an invitation and an encouragement to think about the ways that the web could potentially break through the nature of its origins and find a way to exist or be structured that is more in line with the its actuality, and not its traditions. Even down to the rotating hourglass of the original Mac OS, or the icons used in standard OS systems (which are generally metaphors for their use, that mirror real-world objects EX: trash can / recycling bin), it is easy to see how prevalent these traditions exist. However, it is perhaps impossible to create something without these vestiges, as tradition has to be used in order to create something understandable to our modern semiotic vocabulary. A website then can exist as a mirror of the physical world we live in (mimicking or referencing a real-world object that has its own modes of functionality), or it can invent its own, that are inspired by the unique advantages of the internet, and of the screen. I hope to accomplish this with my website, creating an environment that is decidedly virtual, not a metaphor or vestige of the past, but something that is inherent to the internet. However, as the function of the website is to clearly and beautifully present my work (as a VEHICLE for content), I don't want to trip out this car too much. If it is too experimental, gimmicky, or web-designer-masturbationey, then it has failed what it has set out to do. However, these things are important to think about, and perhaps harness subtly, without attempting to break the mold completely.

The abstraction of the page is another concept that I hope to explore more in my project. The Language of New Media details how the structuring of information has evolved from the stone tablet to the codex, to the internet, and how the internet in specific has rearranged traditional informational hierarchies in new ways. Also, the Language of New Media did a good job of explaining how the information conventions of the past (table of contents, paragraphs, etc) can now be combined and recombined in ways that have been media-specific in the past. These essentially exist as palettes that web designers can abstract in their creation of a 'new reality', or webspace. This notion of the web as other-reality was something that captured my attention in the reading as well. The book, cinema, and the internet all present to us an abstraction of the physical world, and to an extent, they are escapist. They are outlets to a constructed reality that we've created for ourselves. Weird, right? But what's interesting about these outlets is their inability to escape the way that they mirror reality, no matter how unrealistic or bizarre they get. Again, this stems from the fact that they wouldn't be able to be understood without utilizing the perceptual symbols that currently exist, but had the internet been around since the codex, I can only imagine how its evolution might have created a new reality, one based around the language and possibilities of the internet, instead of a mirror of literal reality.