Fourth Year Workshop by Kelly Best

FOURTH YEAR

WORKSHOP K E L LY B EST S E PT ‘14 - A P R ‘15

120

KELLY BEST / TORONTO SEPTEMBER 9TH ‘14 TO APRIL 7TH ‘15 To my parents, who have supported and guided me through so much of my life, and in my career as a designer.

THE CONTENTS 04 10 20

INTRODUCTION

PACKAGE DESIGN final designs webpage process document

12 - 17 18 - 19

POSTER DESIGNS minimalistic designs large format compilative poster

22 - 29 30 - 31

VIDEO ART “I Won’t Let You Down” stills and analysis online response Noisy Book

36 - 40 41 42 - 43

ILLUSTRATIONS iPhone girl tablet toddler Nokia Lumia boy

46 - 49 50 - 53 54 - 57

44 2

OF THIS BOOK 60 ROUGH WORK AND PROCESS preliminary illustrative sketches poster design evolutions video compiling photo journal inspiration blog musical inspiration online research “The Dress”

62 - 69 70 - 71 72 - 73 74 - 77 80 - 83 84 - 85 86 - 89 90 - 91

PECHA KUCHAS first class pecha kucha second pecha kucha second semester update summative presentation

94 - 95 96 - 97 98 - 99 100 - 101

OUTSIDE CLASS WORK art + fashion essay: Vaporwave digital texts: compressed translations

104 - 107 108 - 111

SUMMARY

112 - 117

BIBLIOGRAPHY

118 - 119

102 112 118

A B RI E F F O REWO RD

Hello from Toronto! From September 2014 to March of 2015, I’ve been working on one constant flow of work focusing on the same theme, whether the actual ideas around it were all from the same place or not. I’m surprised that’s been at all possible

for me, as I tend to have a problem getting bored when I have to work on the same project for too long, and my ideas and inspiration are constantly shifting from all the influences in my life. I’ve spent a good chunk of my time in class and at school, as well as in my personal life, considering the aspects of my topic and all the ways in which it affects me. How is it a part of my life? How does it affect others? How can I observe all sides of it, and gather my own opinions and information from it? “It” being the internet. What a broad topic that seems to be, I know. What I wanted to focus on, from the beginning anyway, was the impact the internet has had, and will have, on our social and consumerist behaviour. I enjoy gleaning inspiration from the memories of our not-so-distant past 30 years or so, looking back at the 1980s and 90s to see how far we’ve come. I’ve loved movies such as Blade Runner, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and even WarGames for what they say about the technology we’ve had and what we thought the future could be like. The beauty and foreign feelings of retrofuturism has always fascinated me, and I wanted to capture that wonder in some of my work.

Just from working with it, however, my focus had to be tweaked to make more sense. I had created package designs based on the ideas of making what’s new old again, and toyed with nostalgia as a major portion of my work, but found it lack lustre. I decided it was more interesting to focus on the now, what the internet means to me as it stands, and everyone else I know. I wanted my work to make people laugh, feel familiar with it, and consider the digital aspects of their current lives in a different light. While much work has been created with the intention of criticizing our somewhat new-found social dependence on the internet and all it has to offer, I knew it would inevitably be a portion of my work. I wanted to avoid shaking a fist at my audience, as I really was creating work that reflected much of myself. I feel like there’s so much more to the ways in which we use the internet that goes overlooked, and I knew my work had to pull those things apart and put them in the spotlight. By keeping a consistent collage-like blog of the small things I found while I spent my average time browsing online, I was always thinking about different content and ideas that could be involved in my work. Many of the things I posted involved Emojis, the abundant usage of phones, texting, glitch art, and net-related humour. I also kept a small sketchbook for my ideas, notes, and doodles to help me flesh out my ideas as I went through my school year. Those will be shared in this book, as I feel they are a major portion of my thought process. Much of my thinking ends up being hashed out verbally or in experimental InDesign and Photoshop files that wind up getting scrapped and shoved in a “roughs” folder for later, but all of it is important. A massive portion of this work is created at my desk in my small room, sometimes making me feel like I’m glued to my seat. The majority of this book is themed by this, my personal workspace. The internet is used by nearly everyone, and affects all those people differently. For some, it’s like a third arm, feeling like a very-real ache when they’re deprived of access to it. For others, it’s merely a tool that’s there but has never been a major part enough of their life to matter as much. How do you find it grafted into your life?

FINDING INSPIRATION

magazines kept on my shelf for ideas much like this here (Nylon, Elle Canada, Fashion Mag, Vice)

R S A

P C E

MAKING SOFTWARE

Sourcing from a mixture of Windows 95, the Netscape browser, archived websites from the mid 90s, and the remnants of the previous 20 years that still remain so prevalent in current trends, came this ridiculous experiment of a workshop project.

WHATâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S NEW, PACKAG E

OLD AGAIN. REDESIG NS

For the first project of the first semester, we only had one week total to complete something and a process document of sorts. I wasn’t entirely sure where to even begin, so I started by jotting down whatever thought came to mind in my notepad app on my iPhone. After about three days of no good ideas, I began to get frustrated and decided that thinking about it so much wasn’t doing me any good. I left the house on my day off, and almost immediately my idea came to me. It always seems to work like that, when I stop searching for it, the idea for will come and find me instead. Once I had started planning out how I was going to make this idea a reality, I realized I’d spent far too much of my previous years in OCAD worrying about whether or not my work looked presentable enough, and if my work was unique or could stand up to my classmates. I decided “screw worrying, I’m going to have fun with this one”, and I did. I designed two boxes meant to emulate the feeling of purchasing software like one would in the late 90s, except I made the contents something extremely contemporary; Netflix and Facebook. I spent a decent amount of time struggling to make the packaging look as authentically dated and awful as possible, stopping to laugh occasionally when things got a little ridiculous. The end result was something I had a lot of fun showing to my friends and the class.

OUTSIDE PROCESS ILLUSTRATION VIDEO ART POSTERS PACKAGING

For the Netflix box, it was important to keep elements that referenced film and theatre, while also not being tasteful with it in the slightest. With a bit of hunting around online, I found some stock graphics of strips of film that could easily be added with a bit of gradient overlay. By hyphenating the brand name, it created a better sense of the awkwardness around new technologies in the 80s and 90s. Squishing words together to form one name seems to be something that’s become very popular right now, so removing that trend helped make it feel more dated. The blue starburst reads “New software! Connect to the Inter-net at home!” I found the most interesting part of designing these was incorporating all the old company logos and trademarks all over the package. It would seem the majority of software from mid-1990 was overhyped on which system the software was exclusive to. “FOR MICROSOFT WINDOWS 98” was definitely something I had fun adding.

OUTSIDE PROCESS ILLUSTRATION VIDEO ART POSTERS PACKAGING

While both boxes were meant to still feel much like the real websites themselves, They still had to feel dated. I looked up some inspiration, and consulted my father who has been a software engineer for the past 35+ years, and figured out some ways to make my designs look as authentically dated as possible.

job was to make the software box for it, as if it existed in the 90s, as awful and dated looking as possible.

I felt the logo needed to appear as friendly as possible, while also feeling extremely stereotypical and dated. With Emojis and other small illustrated icons replacing typed out emoticons on sites, the simple ;) instead of made the logo instantly feel out of date. I decided just sticking with Times for the lettering kept it feeling as non-cutting edge as possible. Using the iconic blue and red Dixie cup abstract doodle as my reference, I recreated something similar as a decorative aspect of the design. Adding the little “works best on a 28’800 modem” badge in the corner made a clear point that internet speeds weren’t as quick as they are now. The yellow starburst reads “Create a personalized profile! Connect with friends! Send on-line messages! Post and view photos! Share e-mails!”

OUTSIDE PROCESS ILLUSTRATION VIDEO ART POSTERS PACKAGING

The Facebook box proved to be a little bit trickier than the Netflix one, mostly just because I found the standard “Facebook blue” boring to work with. The current design of Facebook’s site, logo, and other company related media is very minimalistic, and uses primarily nothing but white and their signature blue. While this is easy on the eyes and keeps it contemporary without too much updating, it feels slightly boring. My

My process document ended up being a blogformat site I had created to resemble Windows 95 as I could manage. I included several small bits of nostalgic throw-back, including Bonzi Buddy, desktop application icons along the side, and had a functioning start bar at the bottom of the page. All the posts were either inspiration, portions of my work and process, or a .GIF image I had made myself to showcase the feeling I wanted my work to have. A few of the .GIF images I created incorporated other 3D objects for the sake of realistic online nostalgia. The 3D rotating diamond and chrome skull on the Facebook image, and the rotating Internet Explorer icon on the Netflix one made the entire project have the humorous feel I was aiming for. One .GIF is of a colour-shifting 3D-rendered dolphin on top of a screenshot of my iTunes window. I found the music I listened to while I was working on these software boxes was important, as it emulated the 1990s feeling I needed to make it feel truely authentic. Some of the music I listened to included the Internet-famous vaporwave album FLORAL SHOPPE by MACINTOSH PLUS and A Million Miles Away by マクロス MACROSS 82-99 *

This process blog was made using Tumblr as a base for creating the posts and HTML code for the Windows 95 theme, but was hosted on my personal domain. It can be viewed at http://workshop.kellybest.me/

A LITTLE DATA COLLECTION Research was key to tapping into my audience and giving myself more background for my work.

GOES A By taking a small sample of 100 answers in my survey, I gathered a somewhat accurate impression of the average young user.

LONG WAY

20 20

In a survey I ran through Google Docs, I asked questions based around how the user spends their time using the internet from either their personal computer or smartphone. I also looked at what they used their internet access for exactly, and how it affected their daily life. I found

that from hearing anonymous answers, I had a better idea of what my peers habits are, and how that compared what what impressions I had of my own. Knowing that the majority of my audience finding this survey were between the ages of 17 and 23 gave me the fairly accurate idea that I’m not so different from the rest of my peers. Simply displaying this information in a way that was factual and nonjudgemental made the point I wanted without the negative aspect. I’ve found too much commentary on digital and internet habits are coming from groups that tend to look at it from a removed perspective, like “you kids and your iPhones!” This was meant to have a contemplative effect without the unnecessary condesending attitude. This project was more experimental than the rest of my work, and helped me consider my audience different for future projects.

PACKAGING OUTSIDE PROCESS ILLUSTRATION VIDEO ART POSTERS

The designs of this series of four posters uses soft, eye-pleasing pastel colours and a rounded typeface for the percentages. Large, warped grid shapes within the positive sections create visual interest, as well as help to tie in with the digital theme, in a fairly safe, corporate way. The posters are meant to feel safe and welcoming, with the intention of drawing viewers in. Users were asked, “Do you download said music ‘illegally’ from torrents and other file hosting sites?”, to which 81% of those who answered replied “yes, I am very familiar with torrents and other downloading websites”. Other answer options were “no, I only download from iTunes and other paid sites” and “no, I do not download music online in any form”. I found myself rather surprised by just how many people felt comfortable downloading music and other content from technically illegal sources, which showed just how easy to use these sources really can be for the average user.

PACKAGING Users later went on to answer the question “Would you cry/freak out if your computer broke and you lost all your files and settings?” with 92% stating “yes, of course!” Users were later asked if they experienced anxiety and upset from lack of access to the Internet or their cell phone, to which 56% said yes and 44% said no. Overall, it would appear that the majority of users feel anxiously attached to their Internet connections and digital devices, and lack of access feels like deprivation of human interaction and communication.

OUTSIDE PROCESS ILLUSTRATION VIDEO ART POSTERS

Another question asked in my survey was “Would you consider your computer to be a major portion of your life?” Those who responded seemed to have no issue being honest about their computer usage, with a whopping 98% saying yes, and only a tiny 2% saying no.

Of the 80 people surveyed, 66% said they experience phantom vibrate from their phones in their pocket. This seems to have become an extremely common habit felt by a majority of young people who have their phone on their person at all times. â&#x20AC;&#x153;We are now so primed with anxiety about our electronic world (and particularly that which involves communicating such as text messages and social media) that we misinterpret a simple signal from our neurons located below our pocket as an incoming message rather than an itch that needs to be scratched. As we are finding out, it really seems to be all about anxiety that builds up when we are not allowed to check in with our social media which young people appear to check extremely oftenâ&#x20AC;?, Larry Rosen Ph.D states in an article titled Rewired: The Psychology of Technology on Psychology Today.

PACKAGING they spent between eight to ten hours or more.

It can be observed, however, that their time spent using the internet is not always simply sitting glued in front of a computer screen, but passively using their phones to check Facebook or Instagram, or even connecting to music streaming sites such as Spotify. A large portion of contemporary lifestyles revolves around using the internet passively and in small ways that seem to add up to quite a large amount of time.

OUTSIDE PROCESS ILLUSTRATION VIDEO ART POSTERS

How much time would you estimate you spend on your computer/phone using the internet per day? An hour or two? Maybe closer to five? When asked, 73% of users said they spent between five and ten hours a day. Out of the total surveyed, 32% said

Amalgamating the majority of the information collected from the survey into a large format 24 x 36 poster created the opportunity for more visual interest and experimentation with hierarchy. I chose to divide the space into thirds and worked in a black and white scale to keep things minimalistic and easy to read. From asking the question “Do you find memes funny? Do you share internet memes as jokes with your friends?”, a total of 57% said yes, they enjoy that humour, 39% said no, it’s annoying, and a minuscule 4% said they don’t know what a meme is at all. The general attitude toward Internet memes seems to be a little more than divided down the middle, with some still enjoying their easily relatable and ridiculous humour, while others have already moved on and deemed them pasé. “Some people have observed that current youth generations have a somewhat ‘desensitized’ sense of humour due to the ability to instantly access humorous content via the internet at any given time. This has lead to humour aimed at young people becoming more obscure and ‘abstract’ to appeal to younger people. Do you feel this applies to you?” To my surprise, only 13% said they find it difficult to “laugh out loud at much at all”, while 60% said they “still laugh at plenty of things”. I was expecting a different response to this, as I have found my inner circle of friends tend to have an off-beat sense of humour, but with this information I’m lead to understand that perhaps it’s only myself and the people I associate with.

O 32

A I

INTENTIONAL CLUTTER

assorted comics, art zines, and promo material Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve collected and hoarded away for later inspiration (and sometimes distraction)

I W O N â&#x20AC;&#x2122;T LET YOU D O W N video art and time based media / 2013 to 2015

I seldom find myself able to experiment with other media in my class work, usually restricted to print or still image display. With my directional focus, I found myself with the opportunity to work in almost any media, especially in digital-based formats. While considering time-based work, I found myself spending an obscene amount of time tunnelling through the never-ending content available to me on YouTube. I hopped back and forth from music videos, to cute cats, to people’s personal dance videos, to makeup tutorials, to some of the most obscure and bizarre animations I could possibly think of, all in a matter of half an hour or so. While this isn’t a new habit for me, I realized how fascinating it is to be able to have such ease of access to all of that and more. So many people contribute to YouTube every second, thousands of new videos being uploaded for anyone with Internet access to see. It’s amazing, and it’s overwhelming. I wanted to capture that feeling of un-ending content and user insatiability in something of my own work. By sourcing all my content from YouTube, I found myself considering just how many possibilities there were for me to end up using. From all the samples that were used, every one was trimmed down to three seconds or less, adding up to a grand total of 168 clips.

OUTSIDE PROCESS ILLUSTRATION VIDEO ART POSTERS PACKAGING

TYING IT TOGETHER

In some instances, I purposefully chose clips that mirrored each other, or shared similar visual cues

KEEPING IT WEIRD

Making sure there were enough clips to shock and confuse as there were to make people laugh was key

I decided to only source content from YouTube as the basis of my video. Attempting to encompass the whole of the Internet’s content is an unachievable feat, but concentrating on the mass use of YouTube made for an attainable and fun subject. The music the entire piece is timed to is OK Go’s “I Won’t Let You Down”, which features a poppy, 2-beats per second tune that is easily enjoyed by anyone, despite age or personal interests (for the most part). The repeating title as a lyric is easily heard as the internet

The videos selected came from a mix of my own personal favourites, videos I had in mind that I knew would look bizarre when mashed up with the others, and videos supplied by others linked via Facebook or through online chatting platforms. When others were given the opportunity to supply videos of their choice to be used in the final piece, they seemed eager to share. When shown the video in progress, friends and family were quick to say “Oh you have to use X video...” Many gave links to several videos at once, excited to contribute their favourite content to be seen by others. In the end, it felt more like a collaboration project for everyone to enjoy; viewers seeking out the specific videos they recognized and reacting (Shocked? Disgusted? Laughing?) to those they didn’t.

VIDEO ART POSTERS PACKAGING

almost speaking directly to the viewer, it it’s promise to never let them down when they want to see more, more, more...

OUTSIDE PROCESS ILLUSTRATION

I created this video piece focussing on the never-ending content that the Internet has to offer to anyone with the ability to access it. The entire culture of the internet and the users that contribute to it feels like something constantly trying to one-up itself; humorous content and ridiculous images that overflow from every social media source available. While the content may be easy to access, the content itself is not always very accessible to the broad audience that may stumble upon it.

#wow #memes #happiness #this is the most ridiculous thing #whoo this is delightful #i love this what the fuck #this is weird and cute and happy #good things #that was fun i enjoyed it #i needed this #THIS WAS A SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE “this was beautiful” #oh my god??? #great timing #the internet will never let me down “Wow. This is great.” “THIS IS PURE JOY PLEASE WATCH THE WHOLE THING” #this is so damn cool #what i like is this yessss #good song!! #nice vids lots of which i havent seen???

View the video yourself at https://vimeo.com/112607540

NOISY BOOK

assignment for graphic design, GRPH 3B18 instructor, Lewis Nicholson In third year, I took graphic design with Lewis. One of his assignments, repeated annually for all of his third year classes as he had informed us, was a project titled “Noisy Book”. That was it, that was the entire concept of the project. Students were asked to create something, in any media they saw fit, that expressed the concept of a “noisy book”. This was generally recieved with a lot of baffled looks and confused questions. Eventually, we all went on our way and figured out something that could fit under this bizarrely open idea of what a noisy book could be. I worked in a video format, as at the time, I hadn’t done much video work before. My concept was based around the idea of using “book” to mean stories, whether or not they were told in a printed book format. By sampling assorted popular Youtube videos at the time, I presented familiar media to my viewers, obscured by glitching and visual

errors caused by file compression (and a bit of editing software). For audio, I had downloaded a full audio book of Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. I simply used the first few sentences of the very first chapter so as to remain recognizable by anyone who may have read the book. I also distorted this audio through low-quality file compression. The story I was telling was meant to portray the idea of an overall loss of quality to media and stories by digitizing them. When all our pop culture and iconic stories are transferred to a digital format (ie. ebooks, MP3 files, etc.), compression becomes a major issue in preserving the quality. Pops, clicks, tinny echoes, and painful reverberations were heard as the voice read Fahrenheit 451 through the video, paired with oversaturated, destroyed videos, forcing the viewer to experience something low quality.

GLITCH

creating the glitch effect required much trial and error, as well as compromising

FAMILIAR SPACES Illustration is something I seldom get to dabble in any more, as itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not always relevent to my practice and my class requirements. With workshop, Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve had the opportunity to experiment across any medium that strikes my fancy. Getting the chance to draw again was a fun, creatively liberating experience.

MADE UNFAMILIAR

But #luvmynikes, right?

ILLUSTRATION VIDEO ART POSTERS PACKAGING

online. While this was a huge relief from the unending bombardment of BUY THIS and SPEND YOUR MONEY ON THAT, it didn’t filter it out from everything else. We’re still advertised to on our phones and tablets, in apps and online, and it’s become a nuissance we’ve all just adapted to and learned to ignore for the most part. However, corporations and tech companies are making changes to these platforms that make advertising even more integrated into our usage of their services, in a way that’s completely unavoidable, save for deactivating your account. Small companies are forming that aid brands in connecting to popular online personalities so that they can advertise for them, sponsoring their products directly in their posts. With users trusting these people and willingly following their accounts, ads are becoming an essential part of their online experience that cannot be subtracted.

PROCESS

Speaking from a personal perspetive, the more I’ve grown up using social media like it’s an extension of my own limbs, the more I’ve just gotten used to being advertised to constantly. As I got older, downloadable extensions were made available for browsers such as Firefox and Google Chrome that blocked ads from showing up

OUTSIDE

Her interests are well known and she is used to the manipulation of ads that invade her every online activity. As a bit of foresight, her text conversation between a friend has an advertisement for Coke inserted between texts. How long before this really is normal?

ILLUSTRATION VIDEO ART POSTERS PACKAGING

The advertisements are carefully selected to reflect what brands would be targeting her. With options available to marketers such as Google Ad Sense, the content any given user will see is tailored to match their browsing and search habits. Perhaps she is an avid shopper, with frequent searches to American Apparel, Aritzia, and Nike. She love her #starbees! and isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t afraid to share that on her Instagram account.

PROCESS

replaced with an iPhone 6, and what could be her face is negated by a cloud of Emojis. Her digital activity is surrounding her in a mass that engulfs her head, and her posture simply states that none of this phases her.

OUTSIDE

This was the first in my series of illustrations. I wanted to create a recognizable, relatable representation of an average user, specifically a young woman between the ages of 18 and 24. Her outfit is based on a set available for purchase from American Apparel, and an exaggeratedly large pair of Apple Earpods dangle over her shoulder as she casually leans against the wall of advertisements around her. Her head is

My male figure here represents young men between the ages of 18 and 24 also. His hobbies include video games, soccer, going to concerts, and meeting his friends for drinks. While he isn’t much of a smoker (except for the occasional social smoke at a party), who’s to say he couldn’t start? He’s dedicated to his PS3, but he’s been considering getting the new PS4. What about the XBox One? Maybe not. He only buys Adidas sneakers for soccer. Adidas are the best, they’re so in style, and he’s always been a loyal consumer. He has an Instagram, though he doesn’t use it for much except for following his friends and some hot models. Did you see that funny Youtube video he posted? He sent it to your Facebook inbox, go check it out. This figure has a Nokia Lumia for a head, which is currently open on the camera app. His posture is relaxed and comfortable, accustomed to the branded consumption that follows his every move online.

“Apple has agreed to pay out a minimum of $32.5 million to parents of children who purchased apps on the iPhone and iPad App Store. Bloomberg reports that Apple has reached a settlement with the FTC over complaints that it was too easy for children to rack up a huge bill while using a parent’s iOS device.” (Van Camp, Digital Trends)

ILLUSTRATION VIDEO ART POSTERS PACKAGING PROCESS

entertainment, many of these apps are riddled with in-game advertisements and purchase options. Children using their parents phones and tablets unsupervised are often left alone with their curiosity, which leads them all over the map. With their small hands and eager minds, they can find themselves tapping banners ads and purchase options that lead them away from the original content and onto another place, whether it’s the app store or online. From there, they have even more opportunities to run into trouble. This has been such a problem that even Apple was legally obligated to refund parents money that had been lost in accidental purchases made by their children on their devices.

OUTSIDE

The subject of this piece is based on toddlers between the ages of 2 and 6 years old. Their experience with technology and the internet is almost entirely limited to what their parents have access to. Many new parents are purchasing tablets and downloading games and applications specifically for their young children to play with. While this is an easily accessible and fun step forward in children’s

THE SIMPLE THINGS

I find myself drawn to minimalism and pure, clean shapes and colours more and more

R E E T I

M E 59

ROUGH WORK AND

PROCESS

adds up to a lot. It’s been a constant flow of consideration and accumulation in workshop, and as I’ve been remoulding and forming my ideas, the process behind it has sort of flowed out naturally. Looking over it all now, I can’t help but feel like it all looks so cluttered and scatter-brained. I tend to work with ideas coming from all sorts of different places, and hope that whatever parts of those things I liked the most end up finding their way into my own work. But process is process, and all of this has somehow added up to me finding my way through this course. From packages, posters, videos, illustrations, and all the ideas I never carried out, these smaller projects have kept me thinking about my projects in a different light over and over again.

PROCESS ILLUSTRATION VIDEO ART POSTERS PACKAGING

Two semesters worth of research, rough work, photo journaling, inspiration blogging, inspiration playlists, scrapped ideas, pecha kucha presenations, and more, suddenly

OUTSIDE

Originally, my concept for my series of illustrations focused around the idea of peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s relationships with their personal devices, and how their habits tell stories about who they are and what matters to them. The idea of visually enveloping the viewer in the moment with the device and the user would make the image feel intimate, but the lack of face to match to the identity gave it the ability to remain open and relatable. By disassembling the device and severing the wrist, my intention was to analyze the â&#x20AC;&#x153;gutsâ&#x20AC;? of both parties, discussing the physical disconnect that remains despite the close attachment to our digital alternate-limbs.

iPhone 4 full tear down, [http://www.rapidrepair.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=cp-iphone-4s]

PROCESS ILLUSTRATION VIDEO ART POSTERS PACKAGING

Upon starting my original illustration concepts, I wanted to focus on the mixing of internals, of what makes up what we are. Our guts, and our phone’s guts. By severing the visible body parts to reveal the blood, bone, and muscle inside, and deconstructing the device they’re using to expand the wires, chips, and hardware, it would contrast the organic with the mechanical. I considered mixing the two, having the mechanical parts revealed to be the internals of the hand using the device, and blood and bone being inside the phone, but the idea was quickly scrapped as a general, as I began to feel like my series wasn’t saying enough about our habits and attachments. While we know there are major addictions and dependencies being built upon our phones, I didn’t feel like there was anything more for me to say. Not to mention I was starting to feel like I was edging dangerously close to the “shaking a fist at my audience” tone I was trying so hard to avoid.

OUTSIDE

While I was trying to come up with a new idea, one that might allow me to work with a 3D medium, I became fixated on the idea of cellphones, laptops, and tablets. Specifically, said devices being torn apart and shown for what they are inside. The internal workings of these devices that we use every day are seldom seen by the average person, and not much thought is put into considering how our personal devices work. We love our iPhones, Blackberries, iPads, and personal computers, and while we recognize that they do amazing things, we know very little about the innermechinations.

I moved into using my close-up concept to tell stories about the user and their personal attachement to their devices. With so many people checking their phones every 5 minutes like a nervous tick, seeing an image of someone looking at their device, even from a close-up perspective, is instantly understandable and close to home. Using the surrealness of icons and screens lifting off of the device and floating towards the user, the illustrations would have emulated a sense of multi-tasking, sensory overload, and the never-ending feeling of being busy. With so many apps to check, update, dismiss notifications, send messages, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s hard to keep clear track of each one and their importance. Many use one phone to keep in touch with their personal, school, and professional lives, which can often become confusing and overstimulating.

ROUGH ITERATIONS

original concepets for these illustrations focused primarily on the subject holding their device and using surreal elements to symbolize the varying uses 67

Rough sketches from my illustration series. The posture of each figure is meant to feel relaxed and natural, creating a sense of ease between them and their device of choice. Each figure is meant to project a personality of their own, from their clothing, posture, device, and the activity that revolves around their heds. The toddler was the most challenging, as Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve never really attempting to draw anything but adults. The lilac-coloured sketch to the right of this text was rejected, as it felt too similar to the other young figures in the series.

From the data I had collected from my Google Forms survey, I had created a series of minimalistic posters displaying a large percentage, with the positive space representing that percentage of the total poster space, and tiny information text on what that percentage referred to. I went through a few ideas, but the designs displayed here are the ones that ended up being fleshed out. The first series were made with the intention of using just a simple, bright colour and attractive typeface (Lust script). In the end I wasn’t satisfied with them, so I moved onto something that I felt worked better.

My second attempt used interesting images and obscured them through hue and saturation adjustments, as well as massive pixelation. The typeface was adjusted to better suit the “digital information” look I felt they needed (04b03). I recieved a lot of positive response to these posters, but still felt they were lacking in the aesthetic attraction I was aiming for.

My third and final iteration of this series took advantage of soft, eye-pleasing pastel colours and a rounded typeface for the percentage (Bariol bold). I used large warped grid shapes within the positive sections for visual interest, as well as to tie in with the “digital” theme. In a way I felt it was very tongue-in-cheek, as it felt like a very corporate visual representation of computers and the internet. The posters feel safe and welcoming, with the hopeful intention of drawing viewers in,

The most painful parts of this entire project became the hours spent clicking back and forth between 0.2 seconds of a clip, rewatching the footage over and over to ensure it lined up with the beat, and being forced to listen to the song probably well over a hundred times. Once I felt like I was done, I nearly threw my headphones onto my laptop in exhaustion and relief. But little did I know I’d end up coming back to it at the end of the year just to tinker with it some more...

PROCESS ILLUSTRATION VIDEO ART POSTERS PACKAGING

The video was put together using iMovie, and Quicktime was used to sample videos directly from my screen. There are applications and web resources that allow users to download videos directly from the site, but with the tiny amount of each video I needed, I felt like that was a waste of memory and time. I only recorded the parts I felt would fit the video best, and even then ended up trimming them down to no more than 3 seconds each.

OUTSIDE

“I Won’t Let You Down” was created by assembling samples and clips in iMovie. By sampling Youtube videos I had collected in a playlist and folder in my browser, I put together something that I felt resembled the many different sides on Youtube, or the internet as a whole. Clips came from a mix of old TV shows, new shows, animes, cartoons, music videos, obscure internet memes, cat videos, puppy videos, video games, bizarre art pieces, old commercials, and the list goes on... I found much of the videos myself, searching through my own favourites, as well as by searching key phrases that I hoped would pull up some interesting results. Having others recommend videos for me to use became a majorly helpful source, as it provided me with a better variety of videos that were outside the scope of my personal interests. With the total coming to 168 clips or so, the video feels like I wanted it to: insane and hilarious, with a pinch of WTF?

PHOTO LIFE

snapshots and short videos I took on my phone whenever I felt particularly inspired 75

In first semester, Lewis requested we keep a photo journal as a small project on the side. It started with the request of taking a photo of something that related to our topic every day, but I knew that would be a challenge. I’ll be honest, that really did not happen for me. Finding something unique every day that related to my topic was a challenge enough, and remembering to take a photo every day was usually the last thing on my mind. However, I did manage to collect a sort of diary of my life and work through my phone. I suppose the project in itself related to my topic, as having a camera in your pocket at all times has basically become standard for everyone. It would seem like a miracle to someone 20 years ago, but the ability to whip your phone out and take a photo whenever you want is extremely liberating. This seems to be an irritating issue for some people, with Instagram culture creating a huge influx of everyone taking a photo of their meals, their outfits, their pets, and whatever else comes to mind, posting them daily. I personally find this very appealing. I don’t think anyone’s ever going to look back at the accounts they posted these photos to and think “Gee, I sure wish I hadn’t taken so many photos of my life and my friends”. We’re documenting our lives in new ways that are so easy to share.

Each of the photos I’ve inluded in this section tell a tiny story of their own. On this page from top to bottom, my cat was watching kids running down the street in front of my house. The macarons were a gift from Lewis to class one day, and I was really excited since I’d never had one before! The last was an attempt at a “what’s in my bag” photo for this book, but I ended up scrapping it. The contents are, however, thinga I usually keep on my person, at least when heading downtown for class.

PHOTO JOURNAL Starting at the top, from left to right, in this photo I had captured an amazingly inspiring moment at Tycho live show I had the luck of getting to see. A self portrait that I had taken to reflect my natural state: black and white, with my cat, and always using my laptop. While standing in a top floor of the Bay around 9pm, I thought to take a photo of the lights from the buildings and cars around Nathan Phillips Square. During one of our in class presentations, a classmates laptop glitched out like crazy after being disconnected from the projector, and everyone was consequently fascinated. A simple photo of a rainbow that appeared during a particularly crappy day which was sort of uplifting. And, as a little present to myself, I made a cactus and succulent terrarium!

03/23/15

03/26/15 10:28pm

TUMBLR INSPIRATION BLOG I’ve been casually currating an inspiration-based blog on Tumblr over the duration of my this entire year, mostly collecting images that I feel reflect my topic, or inspire me towards work I may do in the future. I’ve found it very helpful to see other work online that has something to do with what I’m working on, and keeping it in an easily accessible blog format has made things easier. The blog has been on-going in the background of all my work, and in a way has become a sort of mini-project in itself. While it’s easy to find new content to add to it through Tumblr, the result feels like a fair summary of all the forms my thought processes have taken. Truly, there is no clear “end result”, as blogs are so much about new content with no end in sight. I’ve done my best to take a massive screenshot of its content up until now, and stitched it all together into one long, scrolling page. The blog can be viewed at http://inter-net-yee.tumblr.com/

TUMBLR BLOG

this online document has been maintained since Octoboer 25th, 2014

Music is and always has been a massive portion of my inspiration, my work, my mood, and my well-being. I find myself so easily swayed from one mood to another, from one feeling of inspiration into another, just by what I’m listening to in my daily life. I have the internet to thank for the amazing ability to find new music every day, from all over the world, by artists I would have never heard of otherwise. I try to never limit myself to one genre or sound, knowing there’s so much more available to me out there. While music may not seem like the most relevent part of a graphic design process book, it is absolutely essential in everything I do.

Awake - Tycho Acid Rap - Chance the Rapper Hungry Ghosts- OK Go Singles - Future Islands A Million Miles Away - マクロスMACROSS Our Love - Caribou More Is Than Isn’t - RJD2 No Reason - Giraffage The Best Of - OMD Ronald Paris House - Porches 2 - Mac Demarco Hurache Lights EP - Hot Chip

Here I have twelve albums I’ve been listening to for the past year or so, on and off or whenever it ends up coming up on shuffle. The first album on the left is Awake by Tycho (whom I also had the pleasure of seeing live). His minimal, electronic soundscapes have kept me working all through the night on some of my projects, and keep me feeling optimistic. After that is Acid Rap by Chance the Rapper. While rap isn’t usually my “thing”, this album just gets me going. OK Go’s Hungry Ghosts album was where I ended up finding the song “I Won’t Let You Down” for my music video. In the center of the second row is A Million Miles Away by マクロスMACROSS 82-99, a vaporwave album that inspired much of my first project, and fueled a lot of my research. The middle of the third row is Griaffage’s No Reason, which I ended up borrowing the song “Hello” from for my final presentation. Sometimes music has influenced my print and nonvideo work so much I wish there was a way to make my viewers listen to the songs while they look at my work. Through websites like Last.fm and Tumblr, I’m always discovering to more, and more music, excited to see what direction they push me in. 85

PROCESS ILLUSTRATION VIDEO ART POSTERS PACKAGING

On the workshop Facebook group that was created, many of my peers have been kind enough to share links to content they feel is relevant to each other’s work, and tagging whomever it may be relevant to. Several of my classmates have done that for me, and I’ve collected the sites they’ve shared with me in a folder in my browsers’ bookmarks. While some of them are purely silly and aesthetic, some have had something to teach me, with a unique perspective on topics that relate my work. In this section, I have decided to discuss a few of the sites that have been the most helpful to me, or simply stood out in my mind.

OUTSIDE

ONLINE RESEARCH

Windows 93 - [http://www.windows93.net/]

Face Hacking: Transforming Our Future Visages With Digital Makeup - [http://tinyurl.com/MBvice]

A New Ecology for the Citizen of a Digital Age - [https://vimeo.com/7617527]

Lonely Sculpture (2014) - [https://vimeo.com/93852159]

Life 2.0 IMDB - [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1518809/]

What Google... and other sites would have looked like in the 1980s - [http://tinyurl.com/pwxangg] 88

Another video that was suggested to me was “A New Ecology for the Citizen of a Digital Age” by Nick Briz. The chaotic and glitchy video comments on our fast-paced technological society in a fascinating way. Lonely Sculpture (2014) is a depressing piece of mechanical sculptural art, using a single robotic finger to tap and swipe at an iPhone on the Tinfer app. Tully Arnot truly does create a sense of

“This feature-length documentary follows a group of people whose lives are dramatically transformed by a virtual world -- reshaping relationships, identities, and ultimately the very notion of reality.” I was recommended to take a look at a movie titled Life 2.0 (2010), which documents the experience of playing Second Life, an online virtual reality game. It appears to only have one listed creator; Teasa Copprue. I was interested in Second Life as it provided users with the ability to truly express themselves without the restrictions of reality (save for a large portion of the game costing real life money). The results have been so ridiculous, Second Life has earned quite a reputation online as being a cesspool of an online game. One of the more fun articles I had the chance to read through is “Here’s what Google, Twitter, Instagram, and other sites would have looked like in the 1980s” on DigitalTrends. The article has visual recreations of these popularly used websites, and looks at how their features and designs would be different in the 80s. A bit that stood out to me was the opening line for Google, “for anyone under the age of 16, the sound you’ll hear in this clip is the modem as it’s connecting to the internet.” It’s strange to be reminded that so many people never grew up with the painfully slow experiences of dial-up internet connections, and the crunching metallic sounds that came along with it.

PROCESS ILLUSTRATION VIDEO ART POSTERS PACKAGING

Jackie Snow at Vice wrote an article discussing the art of Nobumichi Asai. Asai looks into the possibilites of “face hacking” with a combination of makeup, projection mapping, and motion tracking. The article discusses the implications of facial recognition technology, and how distorting ones face may be the answer to avoiding that. Asai also states that “the differences between fantasy and reality are becoming vague,” and looks for new ways to manipulate the human face beyond what is expected of it.

absolute loneliness as this body-less robot seeks out love in a digital dating application.

OUTSIDE

Windows 93 is an animated, interactive website that I found extremely fun to play with. Each of the icons behave in their own way when clicked, some distorting the virtual operating system, some opening mini in-browser games. I spent at least an hour playing around with all the bits of the website. I’m assuming it’s some sort of art project, as a few websites have written articles commenting on it and speculating as to what it’s supposed to represent or be about. The dated graphic style was so appealing to me.

THE DRESS

(VIRAL PHENOMENON) “The dress” became an insanely popular phenomenon within a few hours on February 26th, 2015. It was popularized because no one could seem to agree with what colour it actually is. Black and blue? Or white and gold? Massive arguments and discussions broke out online on sites such as Twitter and Tumblr, and hashtags were formed to differentiate bewteen sides. #blackandblue, #whiteandgold, #thedress were trending on Twitter immediately (personally, I’m team #whiteandgold).

Speaking persoanlly, my sister had shown me the photo on her phone and asked what colour I thought it was. I told her it looked black and blue to me, and moved on. Later I went online and saw it again, but from that point on I couldn’t see anything but white and gold. My friend was studying in his school library, so I sent him the photo to ask him what he thought. Within 10 minutes after asking him, he informed me that all the groups around his workspace were looking at the very same photo on their phones and laptops, all having the exact same heated discussion.

So what the hell happened? A simple photo of one dress completely blew up, and all I can think is that this damn dress was the true meaning of “going viral”. That phrase seems to be overused a lot, especially by news sources and online journals, but this set the standard. In

no less than 3 to 5 hours, almost the entirety of North America had heard of this ridiculous dress photo and had formed some opinion on it (whether it was picking a side, or “I don’t care!”). So much so that a simple Google search of just the words “the dress” returns with the first result being a Wikipedia page on “The dress (viral phenomenon)”. I was so blown away by this, I couldn’t help but laugh. Even the school had frantic arguments about it in the student lounge the next day. Viral internet content is amazing, and sparks some of the largest, empassioned discussions I’ve ever seen. That, or “have you seen that cat video? it’s soooo cute!” What do you see?

The infamous dress, [http://mashable.com/2015/02/26/dress-white-gold-blue-black/] Wikipedia page on â&#x20AC;&#x153;The dressâ&#x20AC;? [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dress_(viral_phenomenon)]

PECHA KUCHA JAPANESE: ペチャクチャ MEANING: CHIT-CHAT A presentation style in which 20 slides are shown for 20 seconds each (6 minutes and 40 seconds in total). The format keeps presentations concise and fast-paced.

better, so long as we stuck within the six and a half minute time frame.

The first time I made and presented a pecha kucha was slightly confusing and indistinct, as I wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t entirely sure what the rest of the class was going to be showing, what Lewis was expecting, or if the content I had chosen to show was relevant enough. I eventually decided to not worry about it so much, as I figured everyone else would probably be feeling the same way. When presenting, I felt extremely nervous about how the others were judging the work I had selected, but managed to move past that. Later, my presentations evolved into slightly more stylish videos, with video I had found online that related to my discussions and my recorded voice over top. In one presentation, I was a little adventurous and decided to use text-to-speech software to read my text for me, instead of having to listen to my own voice. It turned out

interesting, but proved grating and thus wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t used again for the entirety of my final presentation. Looking back, these presentations were fun to put together and forced my mind to refresh itself with my topic. Explaining what I was interested in and where my work was going to other people made it easier for myself.

PROCESS ILLUSTRATION VIDEO ART POSTERS PACKAGING

Presenting has been a decent sized portion of our workshop class. In order to keep the class, prof, and ourselves updated and on task, we were asked to create short presentations approximately twice a semester. Originally we started with the pecha kucha format, using 20 slides at 20 seconds each to keep us moving through our topic with specific points clearly communicated to everyone. However, after a few times of using this format, the class agreed that deviating from the 20x20 format was

OUTSIDE

FIRST CLASS INTRODUCTION PECHA KUCHA

03–05. THREE EXAMPLES OF YOUR CREATIVE WORK A lyrical poster designed for third year experimental typography, hand-drawn on my own body as my canvas. An illustration of St. Vincent done about a week after seeing her live at NXNE. A quote-based book cover design also for experimental type, created entirely with assorted pills and medication.

prices, sourcing from other websites to bring their users some of the most useful faces available.

06–08. THREE EXAMPLES OF OTHER’S CREATIVE WORK YOU PARTICULARLY ADMIRE “Sugar” by Phil Noto. Designed photography by Andrew B. Myers. Unknown poster design by Allan Nederpelt.

13. SPECULATE ABOUT THE FUTURE OF GRAPHIC DESIGN AS A PRACTICE AND/OR PROFESSION. As with fashion and interior design, art and design is influenced by the past, almost coming full circle by drawing inspiration and ‘fresh’ looks from previous decades stylistic choices. With the newly updated flat designs for Apple and other digital operating systems being very heavily influenced by the bright colours and gradients of the 80s, I could see a possibility of the 50s or even the 70s becoming the next wave of throw-back design influence.

9. A FAVOURITE TEXT. WHY? “One reason that people have artist’s block is that they do not respect the law of dormancy in nature. Trees don’t produce fruit all year long, constantly. They have a point where they go dormant. And when you are in a dormant period creatively, if you can arrange your life to do the technical tasks that don’t take creativity, you are essentially preparing for the spring when it will all blossom again.” - Marshall Vandruff I feel this quote is a necessary and reassuring reminder that a creative individual cannot be expected to be their most creative at all times, and like all things natural, they require rest and time to regenerate their skills before creating something new. 10. A FAVOURITE IMAGE. WHY? .357 Magnum Gun Hair Dryer by Jerdon. This recreated revolver-styled hairdryer creates a unique juxtaposition between the original purposes of the two objects that have been fused together, forming a deadly object of beauty. 11. A FAVOURITE ON-LINE/SMART TECHNOLOGY RESOURCE. WHY? Font Fabric, unlike Dafont and other somewhat cluttered, low quality typeface resource sites, offers high quality typefaces for free and for discounted

12. UNDER WHAT CIRCUMSTANCES DO YOU INTEND TO EMPLOY YOUR DESIGN SKILLS IN FUTURE? I hope to become involved in mainstream package design and branding improvement, creating beautiful work for all people to see and enjoy in their daily lives.

14–18. AN INTRODUCTION TO YOUR PROPOSED DIRECTION/FOCUS. Over the past 30 years or so, seemingly vital parts of consumerist and pop culture have gone the way of the dinosaur. Movie rental shops like Blockbuster have disappeared, and HMV is quickly doing the same, disappearing from street corners I’m interested in looking at how design can be a part of either replacing or reviving the aspects of culture that we have made “obsolete” by technological advances and societal expectations. We want simple, instant, easily accessible information in any shape it can take. Despite what we’re told, this isn’t a new concept to our generation; it simply changes with the technology that is available. 19. WHAT IS THE FUNDAMENTAL QUESTION YOU ARE ASKING AT THE CORE OF YOUR DIRECTION/FOCUS? What does it mean for an art form to be “dead”? How can design be a part of that? 95

SECOND PECHA KUCHA 1. The internet wasn’t always such a major part of contemporary society, yet we can hardly go a day without knowing we can always just Google whatever information we need to know. How did we even live before Google? 2-4. To start off: How is internet culture influencing our consumerism and media consumption? As I narrow it down, I find myself considering: How is internet culture influencing consumerism culture? Right now, I’m looking at exploring the more specific idea of: How is internet culture influencing youth culture?

5. Internet and social media culture is so engrained in our lives that our generation hardly thinks about the ways in which we communicate with each other, and how that’s different from what our parents and grandparents are used to. It’s different and it’s not so different. Every generation moves forward and away from the previous, leaving everyone else wondering what the hell is going on. Emojis are almost like a new language of their own. Youth culture (or more specifically, cell phone culture) has reinvented them, given them new meaning and used them to replace entire sentences. Emojis mean everything and they mean nothing at the same time. They’re completely personal and completely universal. Artist Liza Helen Nelson recreated Emojis through photography and brought them to life.

6. This backpack is available for sale online at NastyGal. com. I immediately felt a mix of joy and confusion by looking at this piece of fashion, mixing internet/digital culture with the real world felt so right and so wrong. 7-8. What the heck is a ‘vaporwave’? It’s a genre of music, fashion, and art that emerged in the early 2010s. Although there is much diversity and ambiguity in its attitude and message, vaporwave often serves as both a critique and parody of consumerist society, ‘90s yuppie culture, and New Age music, while showcasing a curious fixation with their nostalgic artifacts. 9. I took a quick photo when I was riding the bus home. I noticed this girl watching a lecture on her iPad on the dark bus, as it was the only source of light inside. 10. Took this before heading to class, just because the Emojis stood out to me so much. I felt it captured a lot of my idea very well. 11. Noticed this while waiting for the subway. The first thing my friend said was “who uses SD cards anymore?” 12. The teddy bear was seen while at Loblaws. It advertised itself as being capable of working over wifi with tablets and phones, I suppose to work in tandem with an app. The entire concept seemed so bizarre and yet made so much sense for today’s children. The Second Life poster was seen at Nuit Blanche and spoke for itself. The entire subculture around Second Life is bizarre beyond words, but this piece seemed to sum up a lot of the strangeness around it.

13-15. Only had a week for the first project, so I decided to let go of wanting to make something beautiful and decided to make something to make the class laugh. Subject matter spoke for itself, I think. I used sourced graphics and gifs to keep my piece feeling satirical and relatable. 16. My process format seemed appropriate. The idea of a book didn’t work with what I had done, and it only made sense to make something equally as laughable. 17. Collected data from a survey I had set up online by posting it on Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter. 18. Preliminary design ideas for displaying the data I had collected. Chose to try and work with a generic bold palette and nice typeface (thank you Alex!) to be appealing to the viewer, but didn’t feel like it was what I wanted in the end. 19. “Final” poster design from my collected data, I was making use of pixelated typefaces and halftone patterns for something a little less polished. I found black and white worked very well while remaining relevant to the info and mood I intended for it. 20. My concepts and goals right now are looking at creating something relatable and current. I really want my work to not only interest my viewer, but give them a sense of connection in a way that we seem so accustomed to now. I also want to explore new media, maybe focusing more on the prospects of video art.

At the beginning of the year, I had decided I wanted to do work that focused on the one aspect of my life that has always remained a constant, even in it’s everchanging forms and uses. The Internet is endlessly fascinating to me in how expansive and unending it is, having known it since I was two years old. None of this is new to most of you, it’s in our phones and laptops, it basically is our school work, it’s a non-optional tool at this point. My focus had started off something like this: “Compression of culture and media affects the ways in which we, as a culture, consume media and interact with each other.” It was an interesting idea, but it narrowed things down for me in a way I wasn’t sure I was ready to work with. (online advertising) It came down to me realizing there was so much more in the small things, the aspects of the Internet that were closer to home, that mattered to me and the people I interact with both online and in life. The pop culture that has bloomed and emerged from Internet culture has almost always been so significant in my life that I felt it was worth exploring. Not to mention the speed in which technology is moving creating such a vast dichotomy between now and 10 years ago, more so than there has almost ever been. My focus had shifted, and it moved into something closer to bridging the gap between humans and technology. “When the Internet is such a large part of who we are and how we obtain information, how can we draw a line between ‘it’ and ‘us’?” I’m finding my inspiration is coming from a variety of places, and I’m thankful for those who have taken the time to share links with me on the Facebook group, as well as participate in my surveys and questions. Hot Sugar’s music video for, and his song “Not Afraid to Die” has been majorly influential on my thought process. I

SECOND SEMESTER UPDATE PRESENATION keep coming back to the eerie feeling of the song, and the idea the video gives me. The video focuses on the idea “what if the only environment you ever knew was the internet?”, which in itself is bizarre and hard to imagine. However, the main character of the video, lying in his bed in his dark room, browsing the internet from the massive screen in front of him, feels relatable and almost uncomfortably close to reality. (my survey, Not Afraid to Die) I’ve been collecting posts on a Tumblr blog as I go, slowly added to a small collage of images and text that I feel either reflect my directional focus at the time, or aesthetically inspire the work I hope to make.

Dr. Jennifer Golbeck published an article on Psychology Today answering the question “is social media ruining ‘real’ friendships?” Her answer was a simple “nope”, expanding to state that social media is just that, social. “By one theory, we build strong relationships in four major ways: time spent together, sharing secrets, doing favors for one another, and sharing intense emotional experiences. Interaction online boosts the time we think about and interact with friends, and by offering advice, likes, and comments, we show support.” By looking at the ways in which our devices have become integrated into our daily life and how we create profiles and personas, I’m observing how that creates an alternate dimension. Although it’s capable of being so much more than reality, it’s not unlike what we already live in. I want to consider the idea of digital curation, how we present ourselves online, and how our online habits reflect who we are.

I have been speaking to friends, family, and online acquaintances about their devices, their online habits, and their personal stories and attachments to these things. I’ve found that the amount of attachment people feel to these often varies depending on the persons age, gender, and area of study. I have been working to tell these peoples stories through poster illustrations. This has proven to be a challenging task, as containing all the information I’d like in one image, as well as not making it feel too shallow, is not an easy task. I hope to have at least 4 posters completed after the reading week. Online communities are an infinitely growing part of the internet, ranging from mothers sharing recipes, young girls watching and making makeup tutorials, music fanatics discussing albums and musicians, even to people distributing child porn. In my research, I discovered a community referred to as “the bling ring of Tumblr”. They are shoplifters, and they are very, very good at it. They “lift” hundreds, even thousands of dollars worth of merchandise in a few days and share their “hauls” on their blogs. They share tips and secrets on which stores are the easiest to steal from and how you can even remove security tags from clothing in the change room without anyone noticing. While stealing has existed forever, these are organized criminals spread out globally, making their crime even better (by their standards) through means of the Internet. I’d like to discuss this community, and others like it, in some of my work or perhaps just my process book, as the semester goes on. So ends my updates as of yet. I’m excited to see what comes of this semester, and what new things I may discover along the way.

SUMMATIVE PRESENTATION From September 2014 to March of 2015, I’ve been working on one constant flow of work focusing on the same theme, whether the actual ideas around it were all from the same place or not. I’ve spent a good chunk of my time in class and at school, as well as in my personal life, considering the aspects of my topic and all the ways in which it affects me on a personal level. How is it a part of my life? How does it affect others? There were a lot of questions I found myself answering in my work. “It” being the internet. What does the level of interaction we have on the internet say about our needs as humans? How does the amount of time we spend online affect us? What changes are happening to our online experiences? I created package designs based on the idea of making what’s new old again, and toyed with nostalgia as a major portion of my work. By reverse-designing the familiar contemporary online services of Facebook and Netflix, I played with the idea of how much the internet has changed and what the products of that have been. Just from working with my topic, my focus had to be tweaked to make more sense. I did some research through a Google Forms survey on people’s online habits. I asked questions about their average time spent online in a day, whether they find social media sites annoying, and if they download music illegally. The responses both surprised me and did not. It would seem many people are spending well over 5-8 hours a day online, and even more are downloading content from torrents and other sites. It seems to be a popular opinion that this is uncommon behaviour, but my survey proved otherwise.

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During my research, I found an article published by Dr. Jennifer Golbeck on Psychology Today. She answers the question “is social media ruining ‘real’ friendships?” Her answer was a simple “nope”, expanding to state that social media is just that, social. “By one theory, we build strong relationships in four major ways: time spent together, sharing secrets, doing favours for one another, and sharing intense emotional experiences. Interaction online boosts the time we think about and interact with friends, and by offering advice, likes, and comments, we show support.” I’ve also been working on a series of illustrations looking at how the need for corporations and brands to invade social media has become an even greater problem. As people have the ability to control their media consumption with online resources, brands have turned to inserting themselves into the users selected content in a way that’s just as unavoidable as commercials on TV. The consequences of that are explored through this series, looking at different age groups and the content they consume.

I wanted my work to make people laugh, feel familiar with it, and consider the digital aspects of their current lives in a different light. While a lot of work has been created with the intention of criticizing our somewhat new-found social dependence on the internet and all it has to offer, I knew it would inevitably be a portion of my work. I wanted to avoid shaking a fist at my audience, as I really was creating work that reflected much of myself. I feel like there’s so much more to the ways in which we use the internet that goes overlooked, and I knew my work had to pull those things apart and put them in the spotlight.

From this, I created a fast-paced music video featuring nothing but endless Youtube clips and the song “I Won’t Let You Down” by OK Go. Every sample was trimmed down to three seconds or less, adding up to a grand total of 168 clips. The videos I chose came from a variety of sources, some from my personal favourites, some suggested by friends and peers, and others were found by accident while searching around into the bizarre depths that Youtube has available. The end result feels frantic and absorbing, leaving first time viewers feeling sucked in and confused. The video was intended to emulate the feeling of the never ending content on Youtube, using the lyrics “I won’t let you down” in a very literal sense. By keeping a consistent collage-like blog of the small things I found while I spent my normal time browsing online, I was always thinking about different content and ideas that could be involved in my work. Many of the things I posted involved Emojis, the abundant usage of phones, texting, glitch art, and net-related humour. Much of my process has been about listening to what others say about their experiences with their phones, laptops, and internet habits. There’s a lot of humour around the addictions young people are very aware that they have, such as binge-watching Netflix for days, or compulsively checking Facebook on their phones. Listening to what others are like, what they enjoy seeing, and how they interact with each other helped shape a path for me to consider in my own work. The internet is used by basically everyone in some way, and affects all those people differently. For some, it’s like a third arm, feeling like a very-real ache when they’re deprived of access to it. For others, it’s merely a tool that’s there but has never been a major part enough of their life to matter as much. How do you find it’s been grafted into your life?

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RELEVENT WORKS OUTSIDE WORKSHOP research essay for art & fashion, VISA 3B47 instructor, Jim Drobnick research essay for digital texts, ENGL 4B05 instructor, Martin Zeilinger

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Fourth year has allowed me the opportunity to explore topics I’m interested in more than the ones that have been assigned to me most of my classes. In first semester, I had taken an art and fashion seminar. We were assigned an essay in which we were to write about a specific article of clothing. I took advantage of that and bent the rules slightly, deciding instead to discuss the importance of viral fashion trends and their curation online, specifically with the aesthetic foldly referred to

as “vaporwave”. In my paper, I looked at how internet subcultures born on websites like Tumblr have created a huge amount of influence for fashion, as well as music and art. It’s a challenging subject to narrow down, but I soon found myself with something I considered an accurate summary of what vaporwave is and how it relates to everything else within its proximity. In second semester, I’d taken an English course titled Digital Texts. In it, we explored the influences and possibilties of blogging, hypertext, PDFs, emoticons & Emojis, fanfiction, and text-based web applications such as Twine. Our final research paper for the class required us to explore a specific type of digital text by creating a piece of our own, and then writing a research essay around it. I took this opportunity to look at Emojis, as well as acronyms and shorthand forms of writing, to see how language can be and has been compressed. I looked up several examples of familiar texts online, including an excerpt from a Breaking Bad script, the poem “The Man in the Glass” by Peter Dale Wimbrow Sr., and a cover letter from a prospective employee. A QR code is provided at the end of the essay to view these pieces on the blog they have been published on online.

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research essay for art & fashion, VISA 3B47 instructor, Jim Drobnick

As technology progresses, so too does our society and culture around it. The dependency and assumption that we’re incorporating these changes in technology into our daily lives is hardly given a second thought today. But it’s not too difficult to look back and recall the way things used to be, the ways in which our technology has changed. While some may choose ignore these changes, others work towards a brighter, more streamlined future, while others are looking back and reinventing things from the past. There have been names placed on these subcultures, definitions for this social commentary on digital youth culture, curated by the millennials and generation X; however, this specific genre goes by the newly invented title vaporwave. Vaporwave is a product of the past twenty years of the Internet and it’s impact on social changes. It’s widely considered to be a contemporary cultural, editorial response to nostalgia, specifically over the now outdated PCs, game systems, televisions, fashion, and music from the 1980s and 90s. As music and fashion moves towards something so artificial and pre-meditated, the carnivorous nature of capitalism is so inevitable that fighting for “authentic” art forms no longer feels possible. The formation of lo-fi and avant-garde accelerationist art forms was necessary to become what it is now.

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“What is vaporwave? According to… various music forums, it’s ‘post-elevator music’… ‘corporate smooth jazz Windows 95 pop” (Lhooq, Thump). The entire concept of vaporwave is heavily dictated by it’s influences and an almost exact list of items that encompass it as an idea. As vaporwave develops, it adopts aspects from previous succeeding punk concepts along the way, such as “seapunk”, and renames them as it’s own. Beginning with the early stages of computers, the vaporwave movement glorifies the awkward phases of booming technology and all it offered. Fashion, music, and advertising from the 80s and 90s became the basis for what vaporwave is; a rehashing of the grandeur of dated-sounding, synthetic catchy pop jingles and cheesy advertisements as an essential part of paying homage to this aesthetic. From digital media such as VHS tapes, early LCD monitors, and primary operating systems came glitches and abnormal visual phenomenon from the errors that occurred in them. The pixilation, warped colours and fuzzy static of pre-HD and low-res screens has been a major part of what vaporwave stands for. With newer changes to the concept of vaporwave, contemporary Emojis from text messaging systems on smartphones have made their way into defining the genre. A seemingly bizarre aspect of vaporwave is its abundance of Japanese and Chinese characters, “The text surrounding vaporwave… often employs Chinese and Japanese lettering whose inscrutably enhances the music’s sense of tapping into the airwaves of global techno-capitalism...” (Harper, Dummy Mag).

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The fashion industry has quickly been influenced by the sweep of digital aesthetic cultures, creating new lines of ready-to-wear clothing to fill the desires to project an outward appearance of an online persona. One of the most notorious people known for reinventing the avant-garde digital fashion world is Jeremy Scott. Scott’s S/S 2014 line (A) features the familiar face of the DreamWorks character, Shrek. While the concept may seem like a simple commercial partnership, the reality is very different. For reasons not entirely easy to pin down, the social communities of the Internet recently, quickly turned the entire concept of Shrek into a strangely sarcastic, satirical meme. “…the joke of Shrek’s mediocrity was then filtered through the internet’s many weird joke filters, which end up in a weird mix of sincerity and surrealism” (Sims, The

Wire). The very appearance of his face is no longer simply a reference to the 2001 hit animated film, but it has been mutated into something much more poignant. The vaporwave movement has played an enormous role in repurposing and changing media, often for the sake of tongue-in-cheek humour. Starting at just $120, fashion lovers “in the know” can wear Shrek’s face and project it to others who will “get it”. In Louise Gray’s A/W 2012 line (B), patterns that mimicked QR codes were seen on dresses, bags, and more. Paired with flashy, iridescent fabrics and bubblewrap gloves, the line reappropriates and commodifies digital concepts and commercial packaging into fine clothing. Reminiscent of computer hardware such as motherboards and wires, Louise Gray’s 2012 line takes advantage of digital concepts in a way much like the vaporwave genre has. For the youth interested in vaporwave and digital punk fashion trends, online shops such as Shop Jeen, Fresh Tops, and O-Mighty have emerged with affordable options for the average teen. T-shirts covered in Emoji patterns, iridescent footwear, and TV bar printed bags make creating a digital, visual aesthetic wardrobe very easy.

Starting with music, moving into art, and then into fashion, vaporwave has worked to transcend any one form of artistic expression. The entire concept of digitally curated concept aesthetics stays very much alive on websites such as Tumblr. Users strive to only post and reblog images, music, text posts, and more that they feel reflects their very distinct personal aesthetic. The phrase “this is my aesthetic” is often used to attempt to relate something to oneself, even when it could be something as strange as an oversaturated photo of a dolphin cut-out and placed in a photograph of outer space. Other users rarely question this, and support each other in their quest for achieving this concept. With this strong desire to reflect these things in both digital and physical formats, fashion designers have created clothing lines that fit into these aesthetic concepts. Christopher Kane’s resort 2011 line (C) features clothing made entirely out of galaxy and space-patterned fabrics, which have quickly become some of the most coveted pieces for those interested in the “galaxycore aesthetic”. As it grows and becomes more than just clothing and extend to digital formats, these aesthetics soon become a desired lifestyle. Vaporwave has been adopted as a lifestyle achievement, ranging from the music one listens to, the clothing they wear, the furnishings of their home, the image of the blog

they maintain, and even their online representations of themselves. In the digital world of video games and customizable characters, users contribute self-made clothing for the community to use to better express themselves online. “This presents the opportunity to explore ideas and implementations of ideas in the virtual world without material or construction costs.” (VISA 3B47, pg. 332) As clothing moves towards a digital format, anyone can be a designer, and designers are without limits of comfort, material, or even reallife possibilities such as shape and colour-shifting “fabrics”. Vaporwave’s entire meaning is subject to change as the means of expressing it expand. Currently, vaporwave’s identity is based in 1980s and 90s technology. But as technology progresses and

time passes, that concept of what technology is dated and what isn’t will quickly change as well. Will the idea of vaporwave remain the same when dated tech moves further away, or will it change with the times, perhaps even gaining a new name to better define itself ? However, in the meantime, while it’s motivation is clear, it’s direction is something ever changing. The nature of vaporwave, and other digitally generated genres, is subject to change as the very thing it’s so heavily based in changes around it. As computers and personal technology progresses, as will the rebellious concepts that have spawned from them. Vaporwave, being born from the Internet, is designed in and of itself to be short lived. Even the name is evident of it’s unlasting life span, as the users who created it will soon move onto something new. The future of these digital cultures is unclear, but their influence on contemporary art forms is unavoidable.

research essay for digital texts, ENGL 4B05 instructor, Martin Zeilinger

COMPRESSING TEXT, CONTEMPORARY REFORMAT TING Wat can u form a sentence w/? R u reading this? Wat a/b this? Did u lol? Does it make u feel D: or :D? OMG how much fun is txting??? * Language can be manipulated so much, from how we speak to each other, to hwow we write and spell words,

and even to how we use words out of their original intended meanings. When a language is something everyone uses to communicate, it ends up being remoulded and edited to better suit the contexts in which we use it. The need for both spoken and written language to be changed is almost invisible, as it occurs automatically and rapidly just by being used. The alteration and inventions of new forms of language-based communication has taken several forms, from redefinition, mutation of spelling and pronunciation, acronym creations, forming new acronyms, and symbols replacing written words. In the digital world with the invention of texting and online messaging, shorthand spellings, acronyms, and emoticons are abundant and used as a standard. From LOL, OMG, WTF? to “c u @ wrk l8r” and even the internet is not without it’s bizarrely manipulated form of the English language. Or is it so bizarre? When looking at how language has changed over time, the existence of symbols, shortened spellings of words, and new words being invented has never ceased. Many are quick to say young people are somehow lacking in intelligence for adapting to these changes, but it certainly makes sense to assume it’s

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just something they’re not used to. With words like “done” originally meaning “when meat is completed cooking”, now being used in place of “finished”, or “napron” now being known as “an apron” simply due to mispronunciation and mutation, it’s obvious

that things are not set in stone never to be changed, including language. Apple Emojis, now a default part of every Mac OSX with the Unjcode font AppleColorEmoji.TTF preinstalled, are a fun, and useful addition to the standard of typed communication. Having been altered by their users to take on new meanings and purposes, Emojis are applied in varying contexts from Instagram comments, to tweets, to texts. The fire Emoji for example, when paired with the cup of tea/coffee Emoji, is now often commented on friends Instagram photos as a shorthand way of saying “you’re a hottie” (hot-tea, get it?). In online social environments, the use of Emojis has turned into a culture of widespread Emoji understanding. With the prayer hands now so iconic because of Drake, its use now extends past that of just representing praying. Language changes to adapt, so much so that we have reinstated pictures to represent ideas in our written communications, not unlike the hieroglyphics ancient Egyptians and other past cultures have used. With all the ways in which Emojis are used, however, isn’t there more room for fun? Disk Cactus studios began a Kickstarter

campaign to fund a software and keyboard cover bundle that makes typing with Emojis on a laptop easy (and a tad bit ridiculous). While Emoji is a built-

in, optional alternate keyboard for iPhone, there hasn’t been many options available for Mac users that don’t involve working directly through their browser, or copy-pasting through iMessage. Disk Cactus provides user with a fun, easy, engaging way to insert Emojis into all of their typed out writing. Fred Benenson has edited and recompiled the classic tale of Moby Dick by Herman Melville with crowd funding and sourcing, published in a printed book available in both hard and soft cover. The twist? The story was retold with Emojis, sentence by sentence, represented in a second column of their own next to the original texts. This book looks at how telling stories, even of epic proportion such as Moby Dick, can be condensed into a smaller, hieroglyphic-based text for the viewer. In conjunction with Emoji is the ever so important, heavily used trend of acronyms. While acronyms have always been incorporated into language, online they’ve been a fad turned standard. While many acronyms became common in the late 90s and early 2000s with the use of online messaging such as MSN and

AOL Messenger, not so many stood the test of time. From G2G, TTYL, NM, U?, the only one remaining that is seen commonly used anymore seems to be

BRB. While the many acronyms for laughing, LOL, LMAO, LMFAO are still seen frequently used, there is still the less common ROFL. What made some stick around while others faded from use? There was definitely a lot of fear and confusion coming from the older generations who were catching glimpses of their children’s new online habits, as lists of “50 texting acronyms your kids might use that you need to know” have often been published by news sources and shared by other concerned parents. Most of these lists involve massive compilations of obscure, seldom if ever used shorthand phrases and acronyms for things that parents fear their kids are doing, such as MOOS (member of the opposite sex), K4U (kiss for you), MPFB (my personal fuckbuddy), and even just the number 8 being suspected of referencing oral sex. The paranoia of older generations not being able to decode their children’s online conversations is very real, but seems to result in a massive overreaction out of this anxiety. The more common acronyms we still see used daily such as OMG (oh my god) and the more recently made popular YOLO (you only live once) have become so integrated into our culture, it’s now considered quite rare to know someone who doesn’t

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know what they stand for. The benefit of acronyms comes from how condensed they are, and the fact that they give texters and online chatters the ability to say a lot without the hassle of typing out full words and phrases, knowing the receiver will still understand. LOL is probably the most overused acronym, as it’s now become understood to simply mean “I find this funny” rather than the original meaning, “laugh out loud”. With all these shortened ways to say longer things, it’s no wonder platforms like Twitter exist to capitalize on it, limiting its users to 140 characters or less to get a thought out. How compressed can language become? How small can we possibly make a sentence? In my digital text piece, I chose to explore the ways

in which language can be manipulated into becoming condensed, shortformed, and replaced with symbols and pictures instead of words. By taking pre-existing, familiar texts and altering their original format into something a little more ridiculous, I was having fun with language and using it in an unrestricted format. My selected works came from different sources, ranging from TV scripts, poetry, excerpts from novels, professional written pieces, and lyrics from songs. One of the TV scripts I chose was “Cornered” from Breaking Bad. The scene I selected is massively iconic after the wild success of Breaking Bad, and

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Bryan Cranston’s amazing acting. The lines “I am the danger, I am the one who knocks” have become so recognizable and repeated throughout pop culture references that it was clear a reader would recognize the lines for what they are. The word “police” was replaced with the policeman Emoji, and much of the script was shortened down to condensed spellings. The Man in the Glass by Peter Dale Wimbrow Sr. was also used, as the poem is generally well known amongst many people. This poem provided a lot of opportunity for condensing the text, with lines such as “4 hes w/ u, clear 2 the end”. Homer’s The Odyssey book XVII also had a small section borrowed for my editing; looking at how classic literature can be shortened and retold in a slightly more contemporary format. I also included a standard cover letter in a not so standard format, edited down to much simpler phrases and Emojis as the subject inquires about job openings and requesting the employer hold onto their resume for later. How might the employer react if they received such a cover letter? One would probably assume not too well. While working with my selected pieces, I spent a lot of time just rereading the texts to try and find places in which it could be made smaller, or words could be replaced with an Emoji. When adding Emojis, it proved easier to copy the text into the notepad app and then open it on my phone, where the Emoji

keyboard was simpler to use. Files were then reopened on my laptop to edit any additional text down to shortened formats. When I decided I was finished with my texts, I tried pasting them into InDesign to compile a PDF of them all, but this created a problem, as AppleColourEmoji.TTF is not available as a readable font in InDesign. How was I going to compile my texts in a way that was presentable and could still read Emojis? I wound up using TextEdit to paste my texts into, and then take screencaptures to place into InDesign so source captions could be added. The end product is a small collected PDF of mixed iconic and classic written works in a slightly newer format that could provide my reader with an enjoyable experience of reading familiar texts. From working with these formats, I was constantly considering how much smaller I could make my texts, and if that would still be a clear form of communication for the reader. Even though we have the ability to make our written language smaller, is it always the best decision? There are times and places for using shortened language styles, but more and more these areas seem to overlap. There is a billboard for Harvey’s along the side of the Gardiner that says “Angus beef and fresh cut fries, #YOLO”. Why does that need to be there, or does it even make sense? Why do corporations insist on using internet-originated acronym slang to promote their product? There is an intersection between the older demographics in marketing and the rapidly-changing pop culture of young people. The internet has provided so much space for change, and the need to keep up has only become more apparent. It can be uncomfortable to see brands taking possession of these phrases and using them in an often incorrect format. A Twitter account called @brandssayingbae has tracked the usage of the phrase BAE (before anyone else) by corporate advertising and online personalities. Is the juxtaposition of corporate America reclaiming the natural outcomes of online culture jarring? Or is it

only natural at this point, as smartphones, texting, tweeting, and digital communication as a general become more and more engrained in our society. Our phones have aided in changing the ways in which we think to digitally write to each other, and our physical habits have followed. Condensing language into this symbolic format may seem appealing to many, but also simplifies language in a way that can be limiting. By typing LOL at the end of every text in response to something funny, are we really communicating how we’re laughing? Or if we even are laughing at all. Maybe you just cracked a smirk, or maybe you couldn’t help but burst out in a mini fit of laughter on the back of the bus while strangers looked at you strangely for laughing alone. Your friend will only receive the phrase LOL as an indication that you found what they said funny, but doesn’t get the full personal experience of how much you actually laughed. But with Emojis, now the large range of symbols representing smiling, laughing, and even smiling with tears, provide users with the ability to express their emotions a little clearer through written texts. However, this still leaves room for the over-use of an Emoji with a big grin, when in fact the sender is not smiling at all. It would seem text formats can form a superficial barrier between the sender and receiver of said texts, allowing for false attitudes to be communicated easily without either party the wiser. How can digital text hold the same personable behavior as our own faces?

* What can you form a sentence with? Are you reading this? What about this? Did you laugh out loud? Does it make you feel sad or happy? Oh my god how much fun is texting? 111

POST WORKSHOP REFLECTIONS

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It’s strange to be able to say I’ve finally come to the end of my student career at OCADU, let alone as a student all together. From all the work I’ve done in my time here, I know I’ve learned so much and have developed work that I’m proud of. However, my projects from workshop have by far been my favourties, as I’ve had the most control and creative freedoms. It was a challenge to keep myself focused at times, however, as having so much freedom often leaves me procrastinating and being generally lazy. I do try to set goals for myself to keep myself on track, though! I’d kept a small gold notebook as my homework and day planner, but I slowly forgot about it and stopped using it... I put postits on my wall above my desk, which usually works fairly well. Setting objectives for myself to accomplish by the end of the day kept me on track, but often resulted in guilt trips when I went to bed and felt like I hadn’t accomplished enough. This book as been a great way to reflect on the successes and failures of my work ethic, and documents my thought-processes as clearly as I can manage.

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COMING TO A CLOSE The internet is a complex beast, and it fills every corner, every whole, every space around me. Picking a topic for this year was hard, and it felt like such a burden to know that whatever I ended up choosing, it had to stay the same, even in its evolutions and redirections. When it came down to it, picking a topic that was close to my heart and always a part of my life seemed like the most intelligent option. Being a child of ‘93, I cannot recall a time I didn’t have a computer in front of me. My father sat me in front of Windows 95, using Netscape and playing Mickey Mouse’s ABCs from the moment I could sit on my own. Is my chosen career path a result of this? More than likely. Have I been so heavily influenced from that part of my life that I might have missed the opportunities in my life to purse something else? Maybe, and that’s a somewhat frightening thought to consider. But looking at my generation, my peers and my friends, I know that I am no different than anyone else. We’ve all been told our reliance on our devices and the internet is unhealthy, but it never seems to change anything. And with the way things are going, it doesn’t seem like much of an option to change that now. Is it worth fighting at all? Being left behind while technology moves forwards seems like a terrifying idea, and we’ve seen it happen already. The abstract concepts of a mouse corresponding to a screen, of keys typing out words, of a touch screen and

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a single button, have quickly become overwhelming to an entire generation of us. But the most interesting part, to me anyway, is that it will not stop. The advancements in our technology come with need and a desire for more, and those will never cease. Yes, a whole generation of people is already struggling to keep up, but one day, and probably not that long from now, that generation will be me. I’ll be left wondering how things progressed so quickly, and everything will seem bafflingly fascinating, but painfully challenging at the same time. One can do their best to stay on top of things, but who can predict where things are headed? We were promised flying cars, holograms and robots, space travel and time travel, and yet things seem no where near any of that. Are we expecting too much? The internet, as small as it may seem compared to things like space travel and robots, has affected our ability to connect as a culture so much more than anyone could have predicted. The results are off course,

going in every-which direction while it expands into the vast corners of our perceived universe. How pseudo-deep, but it’s hard to imagine anything with the same amount of widespread influence. I’ve had the astounding good luck to be alive while this is all happening, and I can’t wait to watch it go beyond what I could imagine. While I’m no internet pioneer, spending my time online using the same social media that everyone else is, I still feel like I’m constantly reminding myself of how amazing this all is. My ability to take a device out of my pocket, touch the screen, open a web application, and show a video of a cat doing something cute that I had seen a few days ago to a friend is, while humble sounding, mindblowingly awesome. And while it seems like “internet diarrhea”, it’s the unrestricted contribution of billions of minds worldwide, uploading whatever they hell they bloody well feel like for everyone else to discover. And god, am I thankful to witness it all.

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“One reason that people have artist’s block is that they do not respect the law of dormancy in nature. Trees don’t produce fruit all year long, constantly. They have a point where they go dormant. And when you are in a dormant period creatively, if you can arrange your life to do the technical tasks that don’t take creativity, you are essentially preparing for the spring when it will all blossom again.” - Marshall Vandruff

More of my work can be found at http://kellybest.me/

C ’ E ST F I N I

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Here ends the experience that was workshop, and my time at OCADU. From all that I’ve done, I know I’ve learned more than I can account for, especially in a single book like this. I’m glad to have had the opportunity to fully explore my own thoughts and inspiration, and I know my brain will not let me move on from it for a long time. Even after school passes, my mind will continue to consider my topic and all the things I could have done, wish I had done, could do now. Will I create something better to go with the rest of my work? Who knows, but I know I hope to. My mind may not always be “on”, but ideas always seem to come when I least expect them.

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PACKAGE DESIGN Process biog: http://workshop.kellybest.me/

POSTER DESIGNS https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1DDTPX0aDqIJkEEvJq8v43g j8CL2UdkW_NyiJd4MRVIM/viewform Rosen, Larry, Ph.D. “Phantom Pocket Vibration Syndrome.” Psychology Today: Health, Help, Happiness + Find a Therapist. N.p., 7 May 2013. Web. <http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/ rewired-the-psychology-technology/201305/phantom-pocketvibration-syndrome>. Article discussing the ways in which our brains have been “rewired” that affects our perception of muscular twitches and itches as vibrations from our phones.

VIDEO ART All videos sourced from YouTube “I Won’t Let You Down”: https://vimeo.com/112607540 Noisy Book: https://vimeo.com/77088567

ILLUSTRATIONS Van Camp, Jeffrey. “Apple Will Pay $32 Million to Parents with App-crazy Kids.” Digital Trends. 15 Jan. 2014. Web. <http:// www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/apple-to-pay-back-parents-appstore-settlement/#ixzz3VYOJbdKj>.

ROUGH WORK AND PROCESS

“The Dress”: http://mashable.com/2015/02/26/dress-

white-gold-blue-black/

http://inter-net-yee.tumblr.com/

ONLINE RESEARCH Melendez, Steven. “Oh, Snap! ‘90s Web Design Is Hot Again.” FastCoDesign. N.p., 20 Oct. 2014. Web. Retro, simple graphics have made a major come-back in design trends. Life 2.0. Perf. Teasa Copprue. Life 2.0. IMDb.com, 2010. Web. 27 Nov. 2014. Film about Second Life and those who play it. Felton, Nicholas. “Feltron.com.” Feltron.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 27 Nov. 2014. <http://feltron.com/>.

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Graphic designer with a large portfolio of complex and inspiring infographics. A Story of Mixed Emoticons. Perf. Rives. TedTalks. N.p., Feb. 2008. Web. <http://www.ted.com/talks/rives_tells_a_story_of_ mixed_emoticons>. Quaranta, Domenico. “Attraction, Repulsion, Rage | Jon Rafman’s ‘Mainsqueeze’.” DIS Magazine. N.p., n.d. Web. <http:// dismagazine.com/dystopia/65372/jon-rafman-mainsqueeze/>. Bizarre video, made up of perverse and disturbing clips found online. Features animal abuse, sexual content, and generally disgusting imagry. Jefferson, Whitney. “Can You Match The Emoji With Its True Meaning?” BuzzFeed. N.p., 6 Oct. 2014. Web. <http://www. buzzfeed.com/whitneyjefferson/match-the-emoji-with-its-truemeaning#2p5zg9z>. Short quiz focused on how others interpret Emojis differently from their original, intended meaning. Opam, Kwame. “Windows 93 Is Your New Favorite Operating System.” The Verge. N.p., 27 Oct. 2014. Web. <http://www. theverge.com/2014/10/27/7077985/windows-93-is-your-newfavorite-operating-system>. Short commentary on the art website http://www. windows93.net/, interesting statement that it’s “seen our future and now hates it — and us”. A New Ecology for the Citizen of a Digital Age. Dir. Nick Briz. Vimeo. VideoOut, 2009. Web. <https://vimeo.com/7617527>. Disorienting and quick-paced, this video gives insight into the methods on which information is distributed, the consequences of open access, and the overloading tone of it all. Schiola, Emily. “Here’s What Google, Twitter, Instagram, and Other Sites Would Have Looked like in the 1980s.” Digital Trends. N.p., 3 Oct. 2013. Web. <http://www.digitaltrends. com/computing/what-would-google-twitter-spotify-instagramskype-have-looked-like-in-the-80s/?utm_source=c1&utm_ medium=cpc&utm_campaign=305fijifrost>. Tongue-in-cheek article commenting on how funny it would have been if the Internet resources we use now existed earlier, and what they would have looked like. Snow, Jackie. “Face Hacking: Transforming Our Future Visages With Digital Makeup.” Motherboard. Vice, 24 Feb. 2015. Web. &lt;http://motherboard.vice.com/read/face-hackingtransforming-our-future-faces-with-digital-makeup?trk_ source=homepage-lede&gt;.

BIBLIOGRAPH Y

Article about Nobumichi Asai’s “face hacking” art using makeup, projection mapping, and motion tracking to distort the human face into something fantastical. Arnot, Tully. “Lonely Sculpture (2014).” Vimeo. 30 Mar. 2014. Web. &lt;https://vimeo.com/93852159&gt;. A sad video featuring a piece of art, a single robotic finger, tapping and swiping through Tinder on an iPhone 4 by itself. Johnson, Lauren. “This New Ad Format Helps Brands Insert Your Social Media Photos Into Facebook Ads.” AdWeek. 6 Mar. 2015. Web. &lt;http://www.adweek.com/news/ technology/new-ad-format-helps-brands-insert-your-socialmedia-photos-facebook-ads-163301&gt;. Article discussing the current day surge in user integrated advertising on Instagram and Facebook, by Olapic. Keacher, Jeff. “Plugging a 1986 Mac Plus into the Modern Web.” The Kernel RSS. 22 Mar. 2015. Web. &lt;http:// kernelmag.dailydot.com/issue-sections/features-issuesections/12228/mac-plus-modern-web/?fb=dd&utm_ source=huffingtonpost.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_ campaign=pubexchange&gt;. Fun article documenting the experiment of connecting an out of date Mac Plus computer into a current day internet connection, and watching what happens.

Heine, Christopher. “Infographic: Gen Z and Millennials Want Different Things From Brands.” AdWeek. 31 Mar. 2015. Web. <http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/infographic-gen-zand-millennials-want-different-things-brands-163741>. Article + infographic discussing how advertising affects generations X and Y differently than their predecessors, as well as their usage habits. West, Ben. “Google (2012).” Vimeo. 1 Jan. 2012. Web. &lt;https://vimeo.com/42481397&gt;. Video showcasing a dictionary-style book displaying as many Google results as possible for the search term “art”, alphabetically.

mean-vaporwave-is-destroyed-462650764>

Inspired by a 50 Cent Song, 2013. 2013. Ed. Nick Kegeyan. <http://extracrispy.tumblr.com/post/60278092165/inspired-by-a50-cent-song-2013> Jeremy Scott X Shrek S/S 2014, Sweater. 2014. By Amy Ratcliffe. <http://cdn2.fashionablygeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/ Shrek-1.jpg?22a92a> Louise Gray A/W 2012. 2012. <http://www.wallpaper.com/fashion/fashionweeks/2012/aw/ womens/london#59130> Emoji Print T-shirt, Objects.to.be, Maddie Young. <http://objects.to.be/products/emoji> Lhooq, Michelle. “Is Vaporwave The Next Seapunk?” Thump. Vice, 27 Dec. 2013. Web. <http://thump.vice.com/en_ca/words/ is-vaporwave-the-next-seapunk>. Harper, Adam. “Comment: Vaporwave and the Pop-Art of the Virtual Plaza.” Dummy Mag. 7 Dec. 2012. Web. <http://www. dummymag.com/features/adam-harper-vaporwave>. Sims, David. “Why Is the Internet So Obsessed With Shrek?” The Wire. 19 May 2014. Web. <http://www.thewire.com/entertainment/2014/05/why-is-the-internet-so-obsessed-withshrek/371189/>. Farren, Anne, and Andrew Hutchison. “Digital Clothes: Active, Dynamic, and Virtual Textiles and Garments.” VISA 3B47: Art and Fashion. Berg, 2004. 332. Print.

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OUTSIDE CLASS WORK Sea Punk’d! 2013. Meg Grey, Ollie Henderson. < http://www.imageamplified.com/2013/06/sunday-ollie-henderson-in-sea-punkd-by-pierre-toussaint-meg-gray-june-2013wwwimageamplifiedcom-image-amplified.html> What Do You Mean Vaporwave Is Destroyed. 2014. <http://whatsernamekatzchen.deviantart.com/art/what-do-you-

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