journal entries/reading responses


laurel schwulst - my website is a shifting house next to a river of knowledge

of schwulst’s personifications of the idea of a website, my favorite is a website as a puddle. puddles, temporary collections of rainwater that come following storms or any precipitation, and can be created in an instant. this is much like a website, which can appear out of nowhere in a burst. websites and puddles are ephemeral by nature - they can be highly temporary or long-lasting, they can evaporate quickly or return again the next day.

i like to think of websites in this regard as a contrast to what we are taught about the lasting power of content on the internet. as children we have it drilled into our minds that anything we put on the internet or on social media is there forever, nothing ever really goes away. i think it’s much nicer to consider that websites, while solid creations that can stand the test of time, can also be fleeting and momentary, much like a puddle or a stain.

j.r. carpenter - a handmade web

carpenter refers to the mid-to-late 90’s as the brief period “after the academic web and before the corporate web,” but doesn’t elaborate further into those two ideas. i thought the descriptions of academic and corporate web design were curious, and attempted to research to determine exactly what carpenter was trying to use as a point of comparison, but came up blank.

referencing carpenter's explanation of her personal website design and how it resists change, i appreciate the idea that out-of-date design is currently cool enough to continue implementing it for the time being. she suggests that the term “handmade web” draws attention both to the labor involved in creation of websites, and the instructional function of each website that a person creates. every website i open looking for ideas functions as instructions for how to replicate the thing i like, but it wouldn’t be possible if not for the manual creation of webpages by their designer.

additionally i appreciate carpenter’s hesitance to update her own website design to meet modern standards and aesthetics - i like that these aesthetics are resistant to change in the same way that more traditional fine art is also fairly resistant to change over time. design ideas and methods change over time to meet technological abilities but the things that people find appealing tend to stay consistent.

mindy seu - the poetry of tools

seu suggests the seemingly common-sense idea that technology is more than just a tool, but dives much further into this conceptualization. we see technology as a tool to make our lives easier or to consume media, but digital technology is also useful as a tool for reflection, where our actions and ideas can be examined across multiple platforms to reveal things about oneself.

seu makes the point that identifying where we have yet to go with digital technology can help us appreciate what we are capable of - people nowadays recognize irony in older computer operating systems or app designs because they are working to appreciate how far we have moved past those technological states.

seu asks the question of if the web is living - without considering further i would most likely say no - a living thing has to be capable of respiring, moving, responding to stimuli, reproducing and growing, but one could argue that the web does all those things. additionally seu asserts that the web is indeed living because it can die - an interesting thought which will inform my own understanding of the mortality of all things non-tangible.

frank chimero - the web’s grain

chimero discusses the process of trying to reestablish one's relationship with their practice or something that was once fascinating that’s lost its intrigue, with the general advice of getting back to the basics. he suggests that complication doesn’t inherently bring profundity, and that sometimes what’s most impactful is the obvious.

an inherent contradiction appears when you try to make a website responsive, where it no longer follows directions or its creator’s vision - this example of taking a step forward in the wrong direction displays chimero’s own point that each step we take away from the original intention of a webpage makes the creation weaker. chimero is arguing that the best websites aren’t the flashy, modern ones that could even react to a viewer’s breathing, but the ones that follow the “grain” of the web itself. the natural motion of the web is to force the hands of web designers and shape itself the way it wants.