Splash No. 140 - Making Stuff
Making Stuff
A little over a week ago, I was trying to come up with a fun concept for my personal website, since I was bored of the simple but boring design I already had. I’d wanted to write a fun and quirky bio to capture my fun and quirky personality, but no one was going to a website to just read long paragraphs of content. Most of the personal websites I enjoyed focused on unique visual elements that made them stand out, but they also seemed to be making a statement about what the web could be, that a website didn’t just have to be a utilitarian source of information, but a place for self-expression. As I read about the theories about personal websites, I found an essay called “My website is a shifting house next to a river of knowledge. What could yours be?” As you’d expect, the essay talks about the capabilities of the web — the different experiences it could create, and the metaphors that we could use to inspire new ways of making things. Around this time, I was writing letters and newsletters about letters. And as I thought more about the power of letters, I wondered: if a piece of paper or an email can be a conversation, why couldn't a website be a conversation?
In college, I’d taken several classes on different types of interactive media, from video games to interactive narratives, and everything in between. In many of these classes, we were tasked with creating prototypes of projects inspired by our studies. It would be impossible to build a full-fledged game in the time that we had, so we got used to creating simple prototypes, finding tools to build the skeletons of the media that we wanted to create. One of those classes introduced me to text-based adventure games, and how they often served as the underlying structure for more complicated games. Remembering this college experience, I dug up one of those tools to prototype my idea. I used a tool called Ink to throw down some initial thoughts of what my personal website conversation could be. I showed it to a couple of friends, got through a round of feedback, exported it into a website, added some styling, and launched it on Monday morning. And uh.
(147 replies, 153 retweets, 1.3 thousand likes)
People really seemed to like it! In the strangest chain of events, my little prototype of an idea was seen by thousands of people, who almost universally seemed to love the idea, even if they didn’t love my choice of font’s readability. For the first time in my life, I was being praised for my innovative thinking, a compliment completely at odds with my self-perception as someone who sticks to the norms and rarely thinks outside of the box.
Since then, I’ve been wondering where my creative energy should go. I’ve been focusing on writing for a while but making this little project reminded me of how much fun it is to explore other forms. In general, I’m not someone who makes things just for the sake of external validation or to become famous or anything of that sort. But I think there’s something to be said about the fact that the first time I combined my writing with the interaction design I’ve been studying for years resulted in the most attention my writing has ever gotten. Lately, I’ve been frustrated, struggling to figure out where my writing might fit in the world of traditional publishing and websites, without realizing that my technological skills and background offer the possibility that I may not have to. I think I might start applying Laurel’s methods of metaphor to my writing: what else could a piece of writing be? Could it be an experience? Could it be a warm hug on a winter day? Is there anything it couldn’t be?
Going forward, I want to try and find where I can bring the different parts of my creative self together, instead of splitting them apart. I’m not just a writer, I’m not just a designer, I’m not just an okay illustrator, I’m not just a terrible coder! I’m all of those things, and that might make all of the difference.
Drops of the Week
PLAYLIST - 2020 Instrumental - i don't know where i found this playlist but there's some fun instrumental music in there!
ARTICLE - "Squad Wealth" by Sam Hart, Toby Shorin, Laura Lotti - an interesting perspective about how we can live outside of traditional organizations in society.
FILM - Judas and the Black Messiah - a must-watch
The president may not be a white supremacist, but there's still work to be done. With each day, we move closer to a more equitable world. Reminders:
Ways you can help Mutual Aid Networks
Anti-racism resources
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Cyber-artistically,
Nikhil