Mini Essay 1

The multimedia object I have chosen to analyze is “My Body” by Shelly Jackson. It is a website which opens up to a picture of a woman’s body, it has different parts of her body highlighted, which you can click on to take you to a page which tells a story associated with that part of the body. These stories often contain hyperlinks to other pages, which tell more stories.
As far as the more technical aspects of the piece, I have them listed below:

Database: the “my body” site seems to be a hierarchical database, with many subjects available on the first page with them connecting to each other on their various pages.

Interface: the interface of the site is a drawing of her body with a lot of clickable links leading to different pages. These pages have links to other pages.

Algorithm: I am unsure of this site’s hidden rules, aside from that the initial links you click on will lead you to a page which could grant you access to another tangential page.

Narrative: another one I am kinda unsure of. The narrative seems to be “click on these links to find out about my feelings about bodies, my own and others”

I found this site interesting, all things considered. After I had looked through a good portion of the site and read its stories, I felt closer to the creator. They must have been very introspective and able to look at themselves in a very honest and personal way. Her self image most likely was very open, and it had the feeling like she had told these stories so many times that she was totally comfortable with telling them.
Relevant Links
http://www.altx.com/thebody/body.html
The website I reviewed
https://youtu.be/ErgTqetjEjg
A School of Life video about introspective people
https://youtu.be/ewi8PblJRM0
A video about self image
https://www.betterup.com/blog/the-importance-of-knowing-yourself
An article on the subject of knowing oneself and the importance of it

Mini Essay 2

What specifically caught my attention was a group of art installations from the 1950s to the 1990s. This group of art is specifically group 6. It seems to focus on using technology to make art. This can be anything from CD-ROM devices to game platforms to using technology to make music. I very much appreciate this form of art, as from the examples listed, they do not lean into dadaism as much as other art we have looked over in this class. It also harkens back to a period of time that I am fond of as far as aesthetics go, so needless to say, I connected with this group of art pieces quite a bit. One notable person in this group was Nam June Paik, who incorporated technology in his art in such a way that it has spread across the world through a variety of aesthetics. One notable art piece which I believe is derivative of his style is this. I feel like this is highly inspired by the sort of futurism that you see in a lot of these art pieces. A lot of the 3d art pieces in this remind me of Animusic, which is a series of 3d animations of instruments playing various songs. I recall that this program was specifically revolutionary because they saved time animating by instead making it so that the music animated the machines in the animation rather than them manually animating it. When I was younger, I recall renting its dvd at the library and it blew my mind. I can say for a fact that it influenced me a lot. This idea of using technology to create art is a beautiful thing and it is a treat to see it in its infancy like this.