08-03-03

things that make you go…

so i was sitting here pondering the elements of navigation like any self respecting college student would be doing on a weekend *ahem (oh god, the tinge of sarcasm burns…omg it burns!!!) and i began to think (see? i blamed the sarcasm for the pain, scapegoat!) there are theories left and right about sex in media, subliminal, phallic symbols, stimulating colors, freud here, freud there, blah blah blah, but the more i thought about it, the less i would say i have seen too many examples of this in web design, besides the typical www.porn.com or the manifestations of the music industry (for a good time go to www.justintimberlake.com and witness the amazing musical navigation system…then shoot the designer…what the f*bomb were they thinking? and hello meta tags anyone?…sorry had to spiel.) which are just full of sleezy sexuality anyway.

But seriously this is a valid concern. where’d the sex go? take google for example…now you might be thinking…oh the o’s, in which i would have to say bullshit. or the red…but youre forgetting the blues and yellows, or you could be saying…it’s google for christ sake get a life shell in which case i would say…well what does sex have to do with coke a cola? nothing. i dont use coke for sex. sprite maybe but definetly not coke. but everytime i watch one of those commercials i feel like i am watching mini soft porn…or print, i will use my HOW magazine for a reference (HOW is a design magazine…there’s nothing sexual about design, but this is not why i choose this. I choose this mainly b/c cosmopolitian requires some interest in the opposite sex which is not where my main concern lies, i heart my computer, and frankly…if it doesn’t run on batteries, i dont want anything to do with it.) Back cover…stockphoto group Masterfile two red headed females laying on a flokati (I HEART FLOKATI!!!!) rug looking at you all seductively. But go to their site? nothing. green interface, nothing round or feminine, nothing phallic. where the hell did this obsession with squares come from? just b/c we are watching through a square screen doesn’t mean we need to mimic the shape. I hate squares. everything is a filetab. ok, the internet is a big symbolic file cabinet, i get it already. now do something to entertain me. Dancing monkeys for christ sake. I want dancing monkeys! Minimalism? Thats NOT A MONKEY!!! I can pick up a soda can and find things symbolically sexual in under three seconds, but get online…nothing. classic forms of sexuality is all…pics, erotica, overglorified phonesex.

Maybe I can’t see past all the squares ppl are trying to make look like they are popping off the page at me. Is this your idea of virtual reality? you’ve got to be kidding me. These “squares” dont even register in my carnal natural urges, why would i care? But look, they are so pretty and REAL, you could just reach out and TOUCH them. um, no. I am still not sold. since when has seeing something just to see something ever sold anything. You must have a connection, emotional, sexual, something that strikes a cord, something that gets a rise out of the viewer. We are trying to create realism but we are working from the wrong direction, it is very difficult to trick the mind through the eyes and ears (i didn’t say impossible…anyone who has ever put two index fingers infront of their eyes and seen a hotdog could argue this, but has anyone ever tried to eat the hotdog? b/c they truly believed it was a hotdog? you’re laughing now. but honestly, how many of us have been truly engrossed in a movie or a book? how many of us have cried b/c of these or a song? how many times has every song on the radio made you want to kill yourself out of misery (not literally mind you) Now how many times have you been online and have been so engrossed in a site (not a game, a site), how many times have you been to a site that made you want to kill yourself (and not b/c they used frontpage).

There is something we are missing. this outlet has infinite possibilities and yet are stuck in some encyclopedia-esque design schema. just b/c it is hypertext does not mean that that is all it is. We have at our dispossal some of the fastest, most advanced processing systems and video cards and sound cards and internet connections ever. any schmuck can draw some one point grey box outlines on a page, ad an uber contrasty picture and add some 8 point font and call themselves a designer. I call you FRAUDS.

The web is over ten years old. We should be past this. We should be approaching our works of art. Film had gone with the wind, tv had i love lucy. I watched a representative from Entertainment Arts ask this question once to a bunch of video game designers “where is our work of art?” The sad thing is…they were closer to achieving it when their industry was this age than we are. There is no excuse for this. You say you are “experimental”, thats because no one is paying attention to call you out. you “experimentals” are recycling the same old shit everyone else is “experimenting” with. ubergoth is not experimental, minimalism is not experimental, ITS BEEN AROUND SINCE BEFORE THE WEB EXISTED. experimenting with style is not experimental at all, its skining templates.

Its time to wake up to what we are really about, to what our potential really is. If you are not willing to eat, sleep and dream code, to master psychological theory, to test yourself and push your limits, to form community to enhance ideas, then leave. If you are not willing to dispose of the masks of old media we are continuing to carry then leave. We are not an encyclopedia (“look up reindeer…reindeer have antlers…look up antlers…”), we are not the news papers, we are not television or radio or print. If you wish to continue to ignore our children and refuse to watch them and refuse to learn with them then leave. (they are our future, they are growing up with todays technology, this is not the same as the way we grew up with technology, commadors do not count in todays world. Our children are forming communities in real time around technologies, they have cellphones before they are ten, they are multitasking before 12. They have so much to teach us about how to play using technology, they perfected the game. We must learn to play.) If you cannot get up from your computer to watch nature and and to listen to it and to learn from it then leave. Nature too has so much to tell us. it is so easy to get lost in this world of florescent lights and cooling fans, to forget what we are part of, to ignore ourselves and our souls. If you can’t create, if you cant play, if you cant make mistakes and laugh and open up and stand up for yourself or talk to others ppl in r/t and not behind a screen name then leave. If you are hiding behind your screen and your “career” b/c you are lazy or afraid or anti-social then leave, you are hindering what needs to be done and where we need to go. Webdesign is about people, how they interact with their computers, with others on here, with the sites. If you are elite and a god in what you do then you are not doing it right, and if you cant see this then you need to leave too. If you do not like what i say then it is only because you are afraid i might be right.