This was an interesting first week of trying to learn what in the world was HTML/CSS/JS.
Day 1: Drawing Exercise was a fun way to see how other people translated step-by-step instructions and came up with their own interpterion. Even though we all followed the same steps, each of our drawings had different variations based on what thought they meant. If I was to recreate Sol Lewitt’s Wall Drawing 793A, I would use different colors and probably altar the width and curves of my lines. The exercise was a simply, but effective way to show us how the same code with slightly altered variations can produce sometime totally different and unique.
Day 2: went fairly well with finalizing Discord and setting up Git Hub, but The Ransom Letter exercise almost made me feel like I got dropped off in the ocean without a life raft, although I did have a life vest. The videos and live stream were extremely helpful, so I was able to start understanding what and how HTML and CSS worked and how to go about the assignment. In working through CodeCademy – while I understand how different codes work now more at the end of the week, this way of learning how to code, I struggled with understanding and the Ransom Letter below didn’t quite turn out how I had envisioned.
Day 3: I still felt a little bit behind today and struggling with getting things done the day the assignment is made available, but I approached the Concrete Manifesto with the mindset that I had a problem to solve and while the final design isn’t quite what I sketched out by hand, I’m very happy with how it turned out. I also got some help and was pointed toward W3Schools. This website for some reason is easier for me to understand and learn how the different codes work for CSS. I used following wording below taken from the Map Project Office (2020) Can You Create A Perfect Circle – how can we as a society redirect and save on materials, energy, waste, etc…to make how we produce and reuse things differently then in the past.
Day 4: The Self Portrait Project was a lot of fun to think through how to capture who I was through data. I started with the intentional design wording of “Life is a Journey” we grow and change through out different chapters in our lives by who we are, what we do, and who we love. Life is a full of many different moments, some hard, some joyful, but all of these moments shape us into who are becoming and help us to face the challenges of each twist and turn.
In thinking through how I could represent myself through one image, I thought about the different roles that I have right now on my journey. I am a wife, gardener, caregiver and the list goes on……I decided to represent these different roles through pairs of gloves and created the design below to reflect who I am. I started with the heart at the center representing the love I share through my many different roles to my family, friends, co-workers, and strangers that I meet. I then used colorful square paper to write what each glove represented and placed the gloves in a circle to illustrate that some roles may change as my journey continues, but others will remain constant around my heart.
As I was thinking through how to share a quantitative representation of my life, I thought about the Hasan Elahi photo of the hotel beds and I thought about the different floors/ground that I walk across in a day. I decided to track this across two days to find out how many different floors or ground I walked over and create a gallery for each day. I did repeat some floors, and even though on the second day I tried to find different floors from the day before, I did end up going to the same places – home, work, hospital, etc…I ended up with 17 pictures from Day 1 and 16 from Day 2. In total (removing the repeats) I walk over 24 different types of flooring from carpet to concrete.
I also did the Iconic History which is picture below – it is interesting to see personal browser history in icon format – makes you take a step back as you see how much time you spend on one site, and I’m not talking about Facebook – Amazon and YouTube also stand out. The UMW facivon columns are are also there, but not very often.
