Category: GIF

Net-Art Exhibition: Waking Accessibility Awareness..

Waking Accessibility Awareness…

Works by Ryan Seslow – 2021

This new body of digital illustration, animated GIFs and animated video is a series of reactions and expressions that address the continued lack of Accessibility and Inclusion in our 2021 reality. The series is a continuum to my ongoing exhibition: “Communicating my Deaf & Hard of Hearing Self” – you can view that here. 

I know, the title itself might be making you feel uncomfortable. Thats good because it may activate some action and accountability, or at least a series of questions. Are you up for it? Are you someone who continues to make and publish video content online with out adding captions or adding a written description of some kind to support the audio in the video? Are you hosting video or audio only based meetings with out closed captions or a live transcriber? Are you one of those people who has a podcast and shares it as an “audio-only” piece of media? Hmm, do realize how many people are left out as a result of that lack of accessibility awareness? The sad part is, you or the company or organization that you work with may have an expanded audience and a following of 1K – 30K – 100,000K people (or more). You widely use, or are asked to use and support various digital tools with out ever questioning if those tools are inclusive and accessible for everyone to receive your content? Why is accessibility and inclusion an after-thought for you and what are you going to do about it? I know, you may say; “its not ill meaning, or maliciously intended”.. I do empathize and have a lot patience.. but Im still waiting, and waiting.. will you do something about this?

A part of me feels that this new body of work can and should be shared as its own exhibition. Even though it is an expansion of the body of works mentioned in the link above, this particular series has been created over the duration of the pandemic. It is another response to the continued fight for basic accessibility and inclusion for Deaf and Hard of Hearing people. Each individual piece is an expression to a range of narratives that have played out. I am using looping animations as a medium to share this conceptually as a cycle that seems to never end. The works also display the dichotomy of responses that I have experienced from people through various online platforms. This ranges from caption-less video chats & meetings, e-mail, text messages and social media platforms like Twitter, LinkedIn & Instagram. As I write this I am both happy and angry. Happy for the small changes that some people / institutions have made via our communication about the awareness of accessibility / inclusion and how to facilitate it. But I am really angry at those who have taken a more “salty” and “dismissing” attitude and approach after being called out on their lack of accessibility and awareness of inclusion. Feeling angry is a good thing, it allows me to channel and exercise the anger, I have done that through these pieces below.

 

“No Captions, No Transcripts, No Access”, 2021 Digital Illustration

 

“The Accountability of One’s Reflection”, 2021 Animated GIF

 

“The Caption-less Podcaster” 2021, Animated GIF

 

“The Continued Clubhouse Accessibility After-Thought”, 2021, Animated GIF

 

“The Overstimulated & the Excluded”, 2021, Animated GIF

 

“Even the Word Patience gets Anxiety”, 2021, Animated GIF

 

“The Oblivious & Caption-less Zoom Hosts”, 2021, Animated GIF

 

“The Endless Vibrational Run for Access”, 2020, Animated GIF

 

“But He Can Speak, Are You Sure He Can’t Hear?”, 2020, Digital Still Frame Illustration

 

“All of My Access is Chaos”, 2020 (revised from a 2017 iteration), Animated GIF

 

“Masked Garble on Repeat”, 2021, Animated GIF

 

“Accessibility & Inclusion? It’s Not Our Fault!” 2021, Looped Animated Video

 

Please contact for availability – ryan (at) ryanseslow.com

The Transcendent Energy of Play in the Classroom

The Transcendent Energy of Play in the Classroom

This post coincides with my guest talk on Monday 5/3/21 with the Interactive Technology and Pedagogy course.

Welcome!

Many thanks to Luke & Lisa, and the ITP students for having me!

I thought that writing a blog post here would be both timely and fun for this talk. It might be full of typos, those happen, haha, they can always be fixed 🙂 This post serves as an example and a potential to create and expand the overall synopsis, dialog, resources, feelings, philosophies and of course necessary contextual links! I hope through our interaction both here and during our talk that it will inspire you to create a playful, collaborative project for yourself, for this class that you are in, for the ones that you are teaching, and also with me here on the Net Art site! This is an inclusive, accessible and safe public space for all.

After our talk, be sure to scroll down to the “Reflections & further Pondering” part at the bottom of this post to share your thoughts. No pressure of course 🙂

 

Words like “playfulness, play and fun” are and have always been an essential parts of my teaching and learning practice. I directly extract the physical energy and emotions that these words activate with in me. I visually connect those feelings to bright sunshine. I connect playfulness to an overall lighthearted and open demeanor that can be applied to almost anything. It’s reflective to childhood and the wonders of learning, creativity and intuition. Playfulness is such a great form of expression as a medium. It sets an open invitation to access rapport. We can help each other learn this way, it is a passion of mine and Im not going to stop anytime soon 🙂

 

"communication" fingerspelled in American sign language

(Above – “Communication” – finger-spelled hand-shapes in American Sign Language)

Everything comes down to Communication. We all want to be loved, appreciated, heard, understood and included. I believe that this is our greatest life’s work, to learn how to best and fully communicate from the inner knowingness of who we are. Of course this is a journey through our constant growth of challenging our life experiences and how we reflect on them. Communication is our birthright and we all must tell our own story.

 

And then.. the Internet shows up..

 

Links for Context and Usefulness

(Feel free to use, remix, hack and expand upon anything here)

 

The Story / About the Net-Art website, Creativity & Experimental Pedagogy

NET-ART’s Rolling OPEN-CALL for Submissions

 

Graphic Design Workshop at the GC 2019

Rebirth of the Course Syllabus, The Visual Aesthetic – Part 1

How to Write your MFA thesis in Fine Art & Beyond – Commons Paper

Why Should I make a Portfolio?

The Net Art Course Lightning Talk

 

Cross CUNY Campus Zine Collab with the NYPL

Cross CUNY, Galluadet & Touro Zine Collab

Collabs with MBS

 

Check out this semesters undergrad course website flow:

CT101 – Digital storytelling – (commons)

MMA 100 Foundation of Graphic Design – (openlab)

 

Animated gif of a landscape passing through the interior space..

For more Ryan Seslow on the web – ryanseslow.com

I make a lot of GIFs, Check out my work on Giphy here

Communicating my Deaf & Hard of Hearing Self – The Online Exhibition

@ryanseslow – on twitter & instagram

 

Reflections & further Pondering:

In the comments section below, please leave your general reflections on this talk and the content presented.

What stands out?

What are the main take aways from this experience that you can implement and take action on right away?

What things do you struggle with as a student, educator and contributor to the world of education? 

Feel free to share links, and other relatedness.

 

Thank You so much!

 

 

 

 

An Agent of Accountability – A Digital Storytelling Prompt

An Agent of Accountability – A Digital Storytelling Prompt

*Assignment prompt – Create and apply digital imagery to exercise, express and extend a metaphor 

(this post is my example)

 

<begin-transmission>

An agent has manifested from with-in you. You are fully responsible for creating and bringing the agent forward. You might not understand what that means just yet, but you will. The agent is made out pixels and rasters. Each pixel is recordable and programable. They each hold a unique series of your emotions, behaviors, interactions and potentials. The agent lives completely on screen and is co-dependent on your device usage and screen time. You thought that you could hide behind the screen, potentially conceal your identity, remain anonymous, and a mystery… but the agent knows otherwise. The agent is here for accountability.

The journey begins from here.. please scroll down.

This image above was seemingly the first recorded visual iteration of the Agent. It’s meta data has been corrupted and continues to be untraceable.. there is also evidence of the original file reconfiguring itself by single characters just to jam the reading/extraction or processing of the information for testing.

A visualization was created above to show “how” the agent entered the Internet grid. The simulation suggests that it was through an open port glitch. This is a vast statement as the range of “open ports” are extremely infinite as uploads and software updates take place around the clock, server to server, port to port. There is an unproven theory that agents can and do enter the grid from simple plug-in updates via the open-source platform, WordPress..

The image above is the most current image that continues to manifest in multiple places. Although there continue to be iterations, much like the two images below that were discovered in late April, 2021. The origin of the iterations are still speculative and only educated guess’s continue to surface with little to no real science based data as to why. What do the iterations represent? Why are they needed? Are they metaphors for pressing / avoided inner demons and issues? Are they there to continue to remind us that we are in a loop? We will continue to follow the process and keep you updated..

<transmission- snip>

Xeroxed (A Metaphoric Looping Confrontation) The Explanation Post

digital photocopies, on loop as an animated GIF

Xeroxed, (A Metaphoric Looping Confrontation..) The Explanation Post

2020, animated GIF, blog post excerpt, full browser page GIF and video embed.

Welcome back, if you previously had an intervention with this blog post then you know that it will have rolled you to a full screen version of the animation looping in the browser window. All that the unsuspecting viewer was able to see was a “preview” of the blog post that appears in the blog roll section of the home page, or on the blog page itself. The preview of the post was hopefully engaging enough to lure you in. If you clicked on the preview it would redirect to the actual information in the post, but that never happens, you are taken directly to the looping action itself. A forever looping Xerox photo copy of a blank page…

(PS – you can revisit that simulation here – Click Here <– or Below to View the full Web Browser Page Variation of Xeroxed)

Lets talk context. A photocopy machine produces an endless series of copies.. Our brain responds to several aspects of what we see. It is enough information for us to reflect upon having the experience before… When the ink toner begins to run low it starts to produce degenerated copies. This effects the image and the ability to communicate its message(s).

This animated piece of Internet / Web Browser codependent art is digital and paperless. It is a paperless looping series of repetition to activate your self awareness…. ah the metaphors… a metaphor and an indicator of behaviors. What loops are you facing in your life that you walk right into over and over producing the same results.. the results that get a bit more degenerated each time we become aware that we are in the loop? Below is a screen shot from the previous “page” which is actually a page. I used a snippet of CSS using the page ID # to redirect the URL once the preview of the post in disguise was clicked on – the code is below.

.page-id-20721 #main-header { display:none; }
.page-id-20721 #page-container {
padding-top:0px !important}

Your Assignment: Create a visual metaphor that applies the idea of “redirection” as a concept that can function as a static or looping image to extend its meaning. The final outcome must be shared via an active URL.

 

 

Metaphoric Narratives with the Nature of Nature

Metaphoric Narratives with the Nature of Nature

2020/2021 Digital Illustration

Aaaaand we are back with another series of digital art works and a bit of a “how to” process post. Forgive me for the title of this blog post.. At first, I wasn’t sure if this was going to be an assignment tutorial of some kind, or just an over-sharing process and rambling session. It will serve as all of the above. Ok, so, lets face it, we all love photoshop. We all love the pen-tool and the ability to cut, create, apply and remix images with our graphic assets. Yes? Of course! OK OK, Ill get down to brass tacks already.. In this series I wanted to create and play with some fictional characters and also displace them into my everyday surroundings. It is in this process of being experimental that new narratives seem to poke at and guide us. Lets jump in. Of course I am sharing this process from the perspective of my own art making but also will use the steps to illustrate a class assignment for my foundation design and digital storytelling students. The ability to create well balanced and compelling compositions is skill set that is fun to cultivate and it never gets old. “Let’s always be practicing”, practicing  the ability to compose and create while mastering the dimensions of our picture plane. (that academic jargon…)

 

The gang is all here.. This example shares an integration of characters and the ability to use repetition, duplicates and scale (plus those shadows…). I love walking past the Brooklyn Museum in my neighborhood. I love the building itself and wanted to use it as one of the locations for this new “situation” to occur..

 

This image was taken outside of the Brooklyn Public Library, it shares a series of imagery and the application of a character. Our hero has found itself as a part of public advertisement. Perhaps this is fictional? OK, it is, but think about how your everyday surroundings may offer an opportunity for you to intervene, hack, displace and re-contextualize things. There is beauty in the seemingly banal or redundant, and what I mean by this is our everyday surroundings. We have the power to transform and transcend them. Visual imagery and image-making is a fun way to participate and also see the world in a new way.

 

By default, your friends are going to show up! Another example of repetition, composition and scale variation. Does this illustration tell a more compelling story than the image above it? Are the additional plants needed? What do they add to the composition and story? What is their intention here? Will they expand and take over? Well…

 

Above, is the original image that I took at Prospect Park that inspired the entirety of this series. (Im back tracking the narrative of this post a bit… just like in the Film “Pulp Fiction”… haha, not exactly but Im thinking about that..) The algae was really think and particularly a warmer value of saturated green than I recalled from most visits to this spot. It was also late July and pretty warm outside. Sometimes all it takes is one experience, story or image that causes the creativity trigger. After I took the picture I immediately reflected upon a memory of the 1980s film “Swamp Thing”.. are you old enough to remember that movie? Lol, I was just a kid when it came out but I loved it! So, I got inspired, fast! The image below was the first iteration beyond the “normal” picture that I took. But there is more to this puzzle below..

 

Sooo, you recognize the image below.. that is where the plant came from. Its one of the 5 plants (and growing) that I take care of..(its much bigger now as I write this a few months later too). Im illustrating all of this to help give you a bit of insight into the immediate and very intuitive thinking and creation process that I go through. I like the immediacy of using my own surrounds and digital image captures. This can all be so easily synced with other forms of media found in the public domain or via other creative commons resources. Plus, I experience the process as a muscle, it wants to be exercised, nurtured and practiced. It wants to grow!

 

I brought the image into photoshop and used the pen tool to cut it out. Once I had it free as an asset I started constructing my character. The figure was extracted from a painting found in the MET Museums Digital Open Access Image Archive of public domain works. There is a lot of good stuff there!

 

OK, so this fellow is NOT exactly “Swamp Thing” but it certainly expressed that energy and inspired the flow of the illustrations. I animated this guy below and also added it as a sticker on Instagram. If you use Instagram Stories, under the GIF search option you can put in my name (ryan seslow) and find this guy below… use it at will! There are some some others there too 🙂

Well, one idea leads to another and I kept going.. this is another character and asset above. The static image wanted to be added to a narrative and that narrative became a looping animated GIF. Its a short surreal story, and it was fun to make…

 

The Assignment Details:

Simply: Using this post as your inspiration, dig into your intuition and creative impulses and create a fun hybrid character that you can interject or displace into a narrative using your familiar surrounds.

Have fun and be sure to share your work here!