For the final project Alina, Batu and I have joined forces to create a webpage that shows the most popular videos (from YouTube), images (from Pinterest or Instagram) and articles (from Buzzfeed or Reddit) of the day side by side, with a most popular search at the bottom from Google. This would be for people who have little time to consume content, but wish to stay current on a day by day basis. The url is: whathappenedontheinternettoday.com.

Currently for the presentation we have on the site YouTube’s most popular (of all time), Instagram’s top pict of the day, and Reddit’s top pict. We are currently sorting how to call YouTube’s most_popular  which works within “today” and “all_time” to call the “most_popular”.

I worked on the YouTube API, which although seemed straight forward to make the call, was much more complicated and at times frustrating to work with than anticipated. (See the screen grab below for the code that was used.)

With great frustration and sporadic amounts of confusion I finally was able to get Shawn’s example of the database to work on my site. The problem along the way was in understanding the framework in which everything speaks. I had difficulty sorting out the errors, still not sure how to use MMAMP (keep updating live), and got errors along the way when trying to upload files (because I was trying to sort how to create a table in various ways). I’ve been using TeamTreeHouse  and Codecademy to try to fill in the blanks about the where and how  I can do things (which is helpful for a visual person as myself), but there is still a steep learning curve for me in all this coming straight from ICM. I also attempted a couple other databases, one which a person can write their name and level of workload, but beyond the first page I get an error I haven’t had time to sort out (see below).

Natalie’s work is described as “documentary” although I believe with any documentary work the element of interpretation cannot be forgotten. From NYC street photographers like Bruce Gilden to the photographers hired by the  Farm Security Administration in the 1930’s like Dorothea Lange, the element of subjective interpretation has always existed within visual art. To quote Natalie, her work  “aims to make visible social facts” as well as her “role in shaping and skewing those facts” seems to play an important part  of her work as narrator. Humans by nature desire a narrative to identify with, and so it isn’t surprising that Natalie uses this as a method to inform her work and strengthen it. The theme that she works with, albeit social in nature, does not particularly touch upon anything new thematically, although her method of crafting and shaping it is different than others that have proceeded her. Her working method of looking “for patterns”, and building “new composite documents, rich with descriptive accounts and reflections of both current attitudes and social conditions”  and edited “for repetitions and patterns” to “create a kind of mass choir out of seemingly individual expression” is an interesting notion touching back to the Greek chorus with an updated use of orchestration using ” a variety of quests to define and describe the self as a part of (and agent in) a larger social body.” “The tension is between this depiction of active attempts at self-identification and political subjectivity, and that of isolated individuals in an alienated space.” Natalie views her projects as “both documentary and aspirational, taking material already out there, and aspiring to make it more of a social experience than it currently is.”  It is especially noteworthy that she mentions that “we have entered another level of alienation when our equivalent of a public forum is a person alone in his or her room speaking to a computer screen.” This point especially resonates with me in that my personal artistic theme of exploration is about identity especially in an era when that is being commodified. Of special interest are the nuances  for the individual person, them within their immediate surroundings, and even globally. Having spoken with Eric Klinenberg about his work on “Heat Wave” and “Going Solo” regarding the impacts of people who live alone, and Lynn Smith-Lovin about her work on the shrinking social circles outside the family, has informed my personal quest of exploration on this topic, and so I applaud Natalie for her touching upon this in her work.

This class is where PHP has first entered my world. I’m still wrapping my head around when I can mix it with Html (order of weave), but as an exercise in using it, the class was assigned the task of designing a simple calculator of sorts. Input = An Output. As inspiration, I used a memory of having visited the Natural History museum a few years back and having come across some interesting creatures I had never known before.

I haven’t written in HTML for well over a decade, and albeit some of the syntax looks familiar, there are still some definite differences. For the homework for the first class I created a quick page to re-familiarize myself to get the ball rolling. You can see the results here for yourself: https://createubiquitously.com/Web/Teleportation.html