Default to Compassion
Category: Uncategorized
Reacting to York College’s CT101 in MEMEs!
Are Internet Memes ART?
CT101 – Digital Storytelling students at York College are always up for the challenge!
(Screen the video above first and read the articles below, its context, it helps!)
Further, then, do an internet search for “Are memes ART?” See what you discover.. Oh, you will be surprised. No matter how you cut it, memes are here to stay…is this good or bad for Art? Is this good or bad for Education? Is there context for memes and appropriate application in your course or courses? If so, where and how do you start? We wanted to investigate, and so we did.
We would like to know what you think. And by all means, share you favorites via URLs, and or create your own as a reaction..
Are Memes the Pop Culture Art of our Era? Kate Knibbs – https://www.digitaltrends.com/social-media/when-does-a-meme-become-art/
Another piece with some good insights – http://www.dazeddigital.com/artsandculture/article/34645/1/is-2017-the-year-that-memes-are-recognised-as-art
Please leave your reactions in the comments section below. We dare you!
The gallery below is our spring 2020 first iterations of Memes that express a simple contemplation: “How do you feel about your CT101 class so far? (After week #4) The gallery speaks for itself.
By the way, students were also introduced to adobe photoshop. The memes were created as an introduction to basic design layout and applying text to an image. Typesetting is a skill and learning how to apply type to unify a composition takes a lot of practice. Practice, practice. 🙂
Experimental Remix Process Fun
Experimental fun using data bending, remix processes, hacking and an old typeface found in the public domain.
Been doing some ink jet printing experiments as well with the idea of single run off of each print. Perhaps its just for fun during the experimentation process. Lets see where it goes!
Net-Art Open Call for Submissions! Spring 2020 Edition!
The NET-ART OPEN-CALL for Submissions continues this semester!
Spring 2020 Edition
What does this mean? What is NET-ART on the Commons?
The NET-ART 2020 academic calendar is now accepting submissions on a rolling proposal basis in the following criteria:
- Electronic Media / Experimental Pedagogy
- Animated GIFS
- Digital Art
- VIDEO ART / Experimental Film
- NET-ART (Works created and displayed in a web browser)
- Class / Course Collaboration
- Digital & Analog ZINEs
- Curatorial (A Curated Group Exhibition)
- Solo Exhibitions
- Net-Art Open Projects – (details here)
- “Experimental Such-ness” (e-mail for details)
Looking for useful tools, apps & tutorials to get your submission started? CLICK HERE!
Looking for examples of “what” has been submitted previously? Explore here!
The NET-ART Submission Guidelines:
Submissions may be generated by CUNY faculty, students of all levels, alumni & community members. CUNY classes/courses may also submit collaborative proposals as a group. CUNY faculty & students may also collaborate with others from outside of CUNY as well.
All submitted works will be featured and published as individual blog posts as well as added to existing galleries on the NET-ART website.
Depending on the submission’s proposal, relevant and in context, various submissions will be published and exhibited as an individual page created specifically for the project.
All submissions should be described in written detail with a clear vision, context and meaning. Supporting images and links should be provided as well.
Authors of the submissions and their collaborators must be willing to participate, respond to comments and expand upon their projects with incoming queries via the commons, twitter and beyond.
The purpose of exhibiting submissions in various categories displays a platform for creative and experimental methods of pedagogy. Please consider how your work will contribute to a larger whole that will be archived for teaching, learning, reference and posterity.
We anticipate your submissions!
Question, Proposals & Submissions can be sent via e-mail or via Twitter to:
[email protected] / @ryanseslow
2020 The Arrival –>
And here we are, 4 days into 2020! How are you? I have a lot going on at the moment, teaching-wise, art-wise, design-work-wise and beyond (which is all good stuff!) Of course I want to start the new year with a fresh post, full of energy and excitement for the new year and decade! I have a lot of ideas about how to kick off this semester of teaching and blogging but lets start it off with a show of animated GIFs! Ill get to stating my plans for the new semester very soon, which includes a new overhaul of this website, an expansion of the course syllabus and tons of new tutorials and resources! Perhaps you see this post as an online exhibition, or a vertical, descending scroll of infinite stories? The platform and device that you are navigating from will help you decide and also consume. This is indeed a new series of animated sequences. A new series of narratives and metaphors. Some of which are specific and very conscious, while others are subjective and experimental. I have learned over the many years of my art making practice that I work out ideas this way. I bring together many visual images as fragments, pieces and parts of larger wholes. Lets call them the modular components of the moving whole.. This often presents definitions and redefinitions a bit later on. Im OK with this. Im here to learn, practice, learn some more, and most of all share the journey.
2020 offers another year to creatively grasp the consistently incomprehensible wonder of this life and all of its ups and downs.
Im beyond grateful to be here. Happy New Year!
Happy Holidays! Happy Winter Break! Happy New Year!
(animated GIF collaboration, Michael Branson Smith & Ryan Seslow)
Wishing everyone a very Happy Holiday Season, Winter Break and 2020 New Year!
It has been a great year and a great fall semester!
Much Love and Gratitude!
‘the team and & community at NET-ART
Twenty Eight Degrees & Glitchy in NYC
Twenty Eight Degrees & Glitchy in NYC
Happy 10 Year Anniversary to the CUNY Commons!
We would like to take this time to thank our hosts, friends and colleagues at the CUNY Academic Commons!
Happy 10 Year Anniversary! We appreciate you! We are proud to be here and look forward to growing together!
THANK YOU!
York’s CT101 GIFs the Portrait-Fall 2019 Edition!
York CT101 GIFs the Portrait-Fall 2019 Edition!
Back at it, Portrait GIFFING!
This fall semester my students at CUNY York College collaborated on the annual GIF the Portrait project.
CT101 is the energetic digital storytelling course that introduces, exposes and installs the awareness of a multitude and application of digital tools! All whilst simultaneously creating a digital identity on the Internet at large! We blog, a lot!
CT101 has two sections each semester. We have 40 awesome students on the roster. Although this project is not mandatory, (students can select from a myriad of creative assignments) each student was asked to write an individual post about someone who greatly inspires and motivates them. They were asked to share why and add contextual links for further clarification. (these individual posts can be found in the main feed on the ct101 website) Using the portrait of that person selected we learned basic electronic image manipulation skills with adobe photoshop. Students also made some basic sequential motion graphics with those manipulated images. Then, they were asked to extract one single still-frame from their individual animations to contribute to the animations above. The result is a fast moving collaborative sequence of portraits. The portraits quickly morph and fragment into a series of animated iterations. Does the word ENERGY come to mind? We hope so (along with a little glitch aesthetic, we hope for that too). After the first animated collab was published, we began pushing the pieces further by “examining the potentials of what else may happen?”
Students are now working on screen grabbing the consolidated GIFs and pushing them forward into “various otherness” using the mobile apps below.
Would you like to remix one? What is stopping you?
Dig IN!
Glitche’ – glitche.com
Giphy Cam – https://giphy.com/apps
Instagram – http://Instagram.com
Assembly Design App – http://assemblyapp.co
Ultra-Pop
Ultra-Pop -Infinite
GifVid (simple tool to covert GIF to Video, Video to GIF on the phone)
iColorama S rich featured image editor that maintains full resolution of images
ImgPlay – Awesome GIF maker!
Back Eraser – Great to remove background areas and make layers.
Imaengine – Tons of filters, vector conversions, stills & video
Hyperspektiv – Tons of filters, stills and video
The GIF the Portrait project is an open project promoted by the NET-ART website here on the academic commons. Would you like to join in and submit? Lets chat!
Why Should I Make a Portfolio?
Why Should I Make a Portfolio?
Wait, what exactly is a portfolio? There seems to be a context…or is there?
Let’s define it, and perhaps there is metaphoric value and context in each one of these “traditional definition” examples below..
According to Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary:
Definition of “portfolio”:
1: a hinged cover or flexible case for carrying loose papers, pictures, or pamphlets
2: from the use of such a case to carry documents of state: the office and functions of a minister of state or member of a cabinet
3: the securities held by an investor: the commercial paper held by a financial house (such as a bank)
4: a set of pictures (such as drawings or photographs) usually bound in book form or loose in a folder
5: a selection of a student’s work (such as papers and tests) compiled over a period of time and used for assessing performance or progress
Hold up, whoa! I can already feel your inner physiological triggers sending a bright red waving flag to your ego saying: “but making a portfolio is sooooo much work!”.
Guess what?
LET, AND ALLOW FOR THIS HAPPEN!
It is perfectly normal and alright to let your “old-portfolio-definition-self” bleed out. Exercise that energy. Let’s release it. Ill wait….Take a breath, and let’s remind ourselves that things need to be replaced and upgraded. Nothing is static. We learn, we grow, we expand and we can’t allow past experiences to drive the bus on new opportunities and new ways of seeing, experiencing and re-defining things.
The word “portfolio” is not a bad word. If anything, like anything else, it’s a default term that officially requires your interaction, research, resonance and re-defining within context to who you are and who you are becoming in the process! With that said, let’s think about what the next step is in creating your new portfolio.
Let us understand the “why” part. Why do I need a portfolio? What is the purpose?
Here is a short list (feel free to add more to your updated definition)
- To showcase a body of your work. This is obvious, but curating and organizing things with intention becomes very specific. It activates a higher level of awareness and attention to the process / project. You will learn how to get selective, and this takes practice.
2. To show off your strengths, creativity, skills, effectiveness, efficiency, enthusiasm and passion! Of course, this energy translates directly through the work included in the portfolio. This will be what you believe is your best work at the time, but there is context. Keep reading.. (PS – it’s OK to have more than one portfolio to help showcase various bodies of works and projects.) For example, I’m an applied artist, a digital artist, animation-maker, graphic-designer and a professor of art and design. Some of the works in my portfolio can overlap in theory but I keep a lot of the works separate to subject, but enjoy showcasing them together on my website. That’s right, my website is my portfolio. In fact, I have created a few, the links are below to help.
3. Display your process and evolution. Duration is your friend! Nothing shows off progress better than time. A metric of growth shows itself through time. When I look back at the design work I was doing 10 years ago in comparison to today I see an incredible difference in skill, technique, taste and where my thinking and focus was at the time. I also find a lot of ideas that can be pushed and expanded upon with more with my “awareness-of-growth eyes.” I write a lot about my work and share my process. I believe that this helps me reflect and explain myself better.
4. Stand out and show your style and authenticity – There is only one “you” that you can be. Yes, we certainly learn and are greatly inspired and influenced by others, but at the end of the day we must learn how to be our authentic selves. We must learn how to translate that through our mediums of choice. How will you do this? The short answer is through consistent experimentation and practice. Over time you will create your inner curator, and that part of yourself will begin putting pieces together in groups and compartments. The process will build and flow. This aspect is a journey and it too is anything from static. I take great interest in making changes, learning new things and applying them to the foundations that I continue to build.
OK, all easier said than done… or is it you ask?
I hope that this post will inspire you to begin! Be patient with yourself. The goal is not to create a portfolio in one hour, and there is no such thing as “perfection”. or the perfect portfolio. Let’s produce a result and discuss that result. Be generous with yourself in the process.
I admit it. I love to experiment, test, tweak, deconstruct, remix and repeat processes. I treat the creation process of such a task, creating a new portfolio, the same way that I approach making art. Suspend your judgement! Allow yourself to “make something that may really suck” as a first iteration. This is crucial to developing a contrast of your own. Again, you need to produce a result in order to make an assessment about the result. Until you do this, your contrast is someone else’s stuff / thing that has inspired or affected you.
I would like for you to consider both of these portfolio building and displaying options below. Im a huge fan of both the Academic Commons and the OpenLab platforms. (If you are reading this and are not a part of CUNY somehow, then you can easily follow along individually as both the commons and the OpenLab are powered by WordPress.) Using your own self-hosted WordPress based website and account via ReclaimHosting.com – I have created a sample and template / example using both the Academic Commons, OpenLab and my own self-hosted projects that go into the process. I consider all of these links below to be portfolios. Perhaps you have a preference over one or the other? I hope that these links below will help you get started.
Lets check out a few examples:
- A portfolio website “How-to” example using the CUNY Academic Commons: https://profryanseslow.commons.gc.cuny.edu/
2. A portfolio website “How-to” example using the OpenLab: https://openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu/portfolio-ryan-seslow/
3. My personal website- this is my own domain and my own self-hosted website (WordPress) – https://ryanseslow.com
4. This is also my own domain and a self-hosted website to showcase a body of work (WordPress) – https://Situationalfiction.com
5. Of course, the NET-ART website here on the commons also functions as a portfolio and online platform for various galleries, blog posts, online exhibitions and selected works. Take a tour.
6. Looking for more examples? Contact me, lets chat!
Feel free to leave your questions and feedback in the comments section below! Lets add to this post together!
Or contact me at – rseslow@bmcc.cuny.edu
