More stuff.

This would be used as a menu page for our mission statement, the sizing is wrong but you get the overall idea. I have also included some pieces of art which we would use and I think it would be best to combine these with some of the ones that Juan had posted earlier so that we have contemporary and classical styles. Though I know we're supposed to be quite positive I do think that these images make a nice contrast to the positivity we will be producing through the photographs, as well as the lighter tone of Juan's writing.
Matthew.

More stuff!

The stupid blog wouldn't allow me to load any more stuff onto the blog, so I have to make a new post.
So, here are some more images, the horizontal arrow as well as some designs with the new logo inside the frame.
Enjoy.

OMG, this stupid thing isn't letting me upload anything else, I'll post another blog and put the other images into that.
Bye.
Matthew.

The Arrow in use.

Some photo's of the arrow being used, which we can use for our gallery.
I also have some designs for our menu page here. I also have an arrow. with our logo in.



Matthew.

Some countdown examples

Are we still willing to include a countdown in our website? I've just found this one, it is quite neat and it is easy to change its size. But not colour... On the other hand it would look ok and contrast nicely with the frame...
I will continue search for a perfetc countdown...
By the way, this one comes from http://www.countdownr.com/

another one is

EB

New frame

Hello!

I really like the images- especially the strawberry one!:)
I reconsidered the names and also think it's good if we stick with VANITAS. It sounds nice and actually I agree with your arguments that it would fit the theoretical content.
Yesterday we agreed on the logo that would be made using font from dafont.com and it would look like the image on the left. The font name is BarMKode Inverse and it was designed by Manfred Klein. It gives nice effect and resembles a stylized bar code which neatly links with the ideas of consumptionism and culture jamming etc.
We'll see how it looks with the rest of the interface.
Rearding the frame- I found a nice one, royalty free one from stock.xchng. If we use it we ensure that there will be no fuss as it is free to use. The previous frame I showed as an example was from Google Images and its copyright status was not clear.
It's cute, isnt it? It will look like this in Flash frame of the size we agreed to use (850x650px) so now the space for the interactive will be around 688x503px.

see you on Tuesday at 1pm.
EB

Responses

Bonjour y’all,

So,

Matthew – not sure if you’ll found this useful but i looked around for a few examples of what i thought was more in keeping with the joyful transience theme: 

Ewa – i see no reason why we can’t use parts of Epicurus in our project but i’d very much downplay other parts of it, as i think i said the associations with nihilism are just a touch too unpalatable for some, and there’s really no need to potentially alienate certain – probably religious – groups.  Just a concern is all. Moving on, i quite like the vanitas name, but if you’re not sure we should explore some alternatives. Not to be critical about your name suggestions, but do we really want to market ourselves in this way? It just doesn’t seem to fit our purpose; i saw us very much more highlighting the absurdities of advertising and its anything for attention rationale.  

 as for i, i’ve mocked up a manifesto – just drafted out some points but i think we need to talk over our exact aims and ideas so that i can set about creating some more expansive texts. also i’ve been looking at different transitory sounds to punctuate our website, clocks, footsteps that kind of thing. Will share all on Tuesday.

Juan PdR.

Border for inside the frame.

Hello,

As mentioned at the last meeting, we decided to use a frame as a border for our interactive website. I was assigned the role of making some designs for what would go inside the frame. So, whilst I was working on some designs I decided on posting what I have been doing throughout the day and edit the page as and when I finish a design. 

I have been collecting images that represent Vanitas and fit in with the theme of Epicurus and Seneca. I tried to make some designs in Photo shop but had some difficulties loading them up so I made a folder which contained these, I'll have to show them to the group on Tuesday.

Most of the images i collected are quite morbid and feature skulls and wilting flowers. I suggest we take our own photographs of landscapes etc which can be used as background images, I found some really striking images online and they were copyrighted, so I thought we could just make our own. I have a folder full of images which I have divided into two themes, Vanitas/Transience which contain busts of Epicurus, images of Seneca as well as baroque image, the second folder, Joy contains some photo's I think capture time passing but are more positive and uplifting.

Just read Ewa's post. 

There are a lot of names there, personally if we are going to maintain the link between Seneca and Epicurus, then I think Vanitas would fit well. To me Vanitas, more clearly than say Vanx or Travanx, matches the images we have been looking at as well as the philosophical work we have intended on including in our mission statement. By changing the name to something more contemporary  we would shift in meaning and tone, and would therefore have to rethink some of our ideas to match the new name. 

I do however think that if we were to take our own photographs which are more contemporary and celebratory we could go with one of the names you suggested. If we went with Travanx, based on Dansei's idea that the inclusion of the X suggests a more dangerous youthful tone, we could take some photographs which better represented the change in name and use them as a background to our interactive menus.

Matthew.

Some more

Just to give some feel of vanitas, Pieter Claesz, Still Life, 1630. (this one is taken from http://www.cognitiones.de/doku.php/vanitas?DokuWiki=os3a7sm986i5llp6e7el9bbnv6)

I think it will be original if we stick with the idea of vanitas motive in painting.
Useful source of images- Olga's Gallery, mainly under the section on baroque.

Best,
EB

Some more ideas; NAME REVISITED

Ave (Latin= hello:)

First of all, I like the ideas of both Seneka and Epicurus. Why do not we go for both of them? As I suggested, we can have a "shop with ideas" where our audience could browse and buy our "products", i.e. our selections of philospohies&theories regarding simple life as opposed to conspicuous consumption.
I have a visual idea for interactive images with a scrollbar. When image gets clicked a product description comes up on the side- drafts will be posted ASAP to give more detailed view. I did such Flash tutorial some time ago and it was fairly easy to apply.

Secondly, I came up with some ideas for a name of the product (somehow I don't really feel happy with simple VANITAS).

Some theories first.

According to Marcel Danesi (2006) the more associations a name causes, the higher the connotative index (CI). In order to check what is CI of a particular brand cosumers are asked what they connote the name with. As Danesi writes, the higher CI, the greater its psychological force.

What is more, there are some features which help in improving the CI. For instance, a letter X in the name, such as in EXXON (previously ESSO). According to Danesi's research, new name "sounds like it's going to last", "is exciting", "sounds like adventure" (p.39). On the contrary, the previous name- ESSO was described as "soft", "smooth" and "steady" and it evoked much less associations.
Danesi (2006) deploys several examples to emphasise that "the brand names with letter X seem to tap into the reservoir of connotative meanings in a largely unconscious fashion" (p.41). "The letter X is associated with youth, danger, and all the X-citing things" (p.40). Danesi (2006) provides a list of cultural meanings associated with letter X, for instance thge Roman number ten, a symbol for Christ or the unknown especially in mathematics. Similarly letter Z- it is also "power-sounding".

Brand names can be also amalgams consisting "of two or more morphemic parts, each one suggestive of a specific word." For example, Fruitopia=Fruit=Utopia or ViraMax= Maximum Virility (Danesi,2006:50-1).

Baring in mind the above, here my candidates:

XTRAVANZ- extra+vanity+Z; brings associations with extravagant, extravaganza. I quite like it.
VANITRA, VANTRA, VANITRANZ= vanitas/vanity+transience+Z to make it look
VANITAZ- its obvious; sounds a bit street-wise
XTRAVAN- extra+vanitas/vanity, googled it and there is already a company named in this way. It's not surprising that they hire "xtra" vans:)
VANX- vanity+X
TRAVANX- transience+vanity+X

If I come with some more, I will post them here as well. Please think about these and give a shout when you come across the most suitable name.

Best,
EB

Designs and Icons

Salut,

Haven't written for a while, after our meeting I thought it might be good if we used some images of Seneca as it would fit in with this theme of using motifs from Art as well as adopting some of his philosophies. I'll photo shop some stuff by next week, but these are the sort's of images I would be using. Here is a link to Peter Paul Rubens Death of Seneca. This is a link to a database of images of portraits of a number of philosophers as well as attempts to picture their theories. Went onto the Transience/Vanitas section of the Rijks Museum website to get a feel for some of the imagery we'd need. I'll get to work with desgining the look of our pages this week and will post some of my work as and when I finish it.

See you next week.

Matthew.

Wikis, Metaphysics and the search for the right sound.

Ok, first things first. I’ve set us up a new email address and wiki using the vanitas name, we can always change these later.

We are now reachable via:

vanitas@live.co.uk   (the password is the same as for the blog)

and

vanitas.pbwiki.com   

There’s not much going on there at the moment but i’ll keep playing around until i get the hang of it. Also , I’ve been looking around for some ambient music to set the mood for our web pages but so far found nothing i really like, but theses look like promising sites to dig around in: www.royaltyfreemusic.com and www.estockmusic.com – i’ll keep looking.

 

And now to the nature of human existence; I’ve read up a little on Epicurus over the internet and this is what i’ve grasped from it so far: part of the human soul is dispersed throughout the human body, very much atomised amongst our corporal matter – indeed even making up part of our corporal matter. It is through these particles of human soul that we develop sensation – sight and touch and so on.

So then, there are three basic human desires/pleasures:

 

The natural – a desire for health, comfort and general wellbeing.

The natural and unnecessary – that which we merely find pleasant; smells, tastes etc.

The empty – those unattainable desires of human construction, wealth, fame, immortality and so on.

 

The main purpose of the soul, its route to happiness is to maximise its pleasures and minimise its pains; the empty desires very much being a cause for anxiety and pain and so ultimately misleading and harmful. – All very nice; take pleasure in the little things, happiness is all about moderation and appreciating what you have. Except, as the human soul is physically ingrained into the human body it ceases to exist when we do, there is no greater meaning or purpose to existence. Thus life should be free from worry and repercussions, but also, as this very much sounds like a kind of existential nihilism, where there is no objective right, wrong or valid means for authority; it may not be the best foundation for our project.

 

“How much you have lost through groundless sorrow, foolish joy, greedy desire, the seductions of society; how little of your life was left for you. You will realise that you are dying prematurely.”

                                                                                                                                                 (Seneca, 5 BC – 65 AD)

In the simplest terms Seneca thought that in life we all spend very little time living. In his view there is much less of a moral judgment or even spirituality, in essence we all waste our time in idleness,  excessive leisure in which the value of such time is lost due to its abundance, or else we lose time through obsessive preoccupations, in terms of vice as well as material gain or social status. In short we are wasteful with the only commodity that is truly and objectively precocious – our time. It is something that through the pursuit of other perceived gains we spend freely for everyone else’s benefit except our own.

In the same way any concentration on the past is useless and all preoccupation with the future meaningless as it may never happen.  “to what goal are you straining? The whole future lies in uncertainty: live immediately.” For Seneca, the only fair part about good fortune is that it comes and goes and so any happiness built upon fortune is unstable at best. The answer then, is to live in the immediate sensuality and spiritual pleasures of life; obsessive preoccupations over anything represent nothing more than wasted time.

 

Similar to Epicurus then, in many ways but just a little bit more palatable to conventional thought.

 

 Juan PdR

No worries; metaphor for navigation?

Hi,

we started work on the proposal and will send you for edition.

I found an interesting link which might be inspiring in creating the metaphor for navigation. Rijks Museum with loads of 17 century art- Click to see. Some sculls, candles, mirrors, books etc combined together in Photoshop and transformed into interactive bit in Flash? Don't you think this could be of value if we used some motives from the history of art?

Just an idea:)

Best,
EB

All Apologies

So, so sorry i couldn’t be there today, i would have given warning but it was kind of an unexpected occurrence.

If any of you would be kind enough to take me through any developments i missed i’d much appreciate it. 

Juan PdR

The Good Fight

Hello,

I’ve been looking into setting up our own wiki and there are a couple of places that will allow us to create a pretty straightforward and basic wiki for free:

www.Wikispaces.com

www.Pbwiki.com

So far i like the look of the second better...maybe i’m just hungry.

Ok, so Jurgen Habermas. You should all be familiar with Public Spheres but as a quick run through. A public sphere is a somewhat imaginary zone in which all people, uninhibited and free from coercion can gather and discuss political issues and through debate achieve consensus and a kind of dialectical progression.

The early form of the public sphere developed in the coffee houses and salons of 16th/17thcentury Europe. Here, nobles and the upper classes gathered primarily to discuss art and literature but over time the conversation turned to the increasingly expanding and complicated (thus regulated) economic markets and so political issues became the staple of these early debates. This is important as it marked the shift from political power being something held before the people - as in the manner of lords and monarchs - to something that if not held by the people per se, then was validated by them in the manner of public opinion, which in a democratic sense adds legitimacy to that which it supports.

As the complexities of the trade markets grew pamphlets began to circulate to provide details on stock prices etc. Soon these same pamphlets included the opinion of their producers in ever greater detail and voila, the first newspapers were born. Soon all shades of opinion, all be it in a very narrow class of property owners, had a mouthpiece and a means to spread their side of the great polemic exchange. Alas, as civil bourgeois society developed there became ever more institutional/official ways to voice opposition and hold those in public office to account. And so those newspapers that survived were free to happily pursue a more commercially viable purpose. Opinions were disguised as facts, ideologies became centralised and generic and all in the name of a larger share in the market audience, which in turn brought in a higher pay cheque from advertising revenue.

Soon, newspapers and all resulting news media became dependant on commercial revenue and so largely abandoned the idea of opinions and debate. Where once public opinion was a messianic figure there was now only the god of publicity and the one way dialogue of consumerism. However, the net with it's ridiculously simple, anyone can publish anything approach promises a return to a more inclusive and fully formed public sphere but with the rise of interactive branding and viral marketing our battle isn’t just about saving an intellectual space from the colonisation of advertising, it’s about preserving the last potential vehicle for true democratic participation!!

Quite compelling, i think you’ll agree.   

Juan PdR