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December 2004. Vol. 9, No. 2
click here to visit Folkvine.org >>>Folkvine.org:
The Challenges of Presenting Folk Art On-line.
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Note the entrance to Ruby C. Williams' site via a vegetable stand (rather than through the typical flat design of scholarly presentations); viscerally experience the sounds on the Scott's and Diamond Jim Parker's sites about artisanal crafts associated with old-time circuses; listen to the stories about smoothing and caressing quilts as a crucial part of the Hawaiian quilting tradition.
Kit-bashing is a term learned
from Diamond Jim Parker and borrowed as a way to consider the way we would
use media technology in this project. The kit-basher takes a toy train
kit, and breaks the pieces in order to change the characters to fit the
needs of the circus he is building. For our project, the kit was the design
of websites especially for cultural scholarship. The bashing was using
folk art as a model for design - changing both the meaning and uses of
scholarship and folk art. In short, the kit-bashing model of technology
changes the relationship between observers and observed. It also changes
the function of the folk art: no longer examples of an innocent past,
but models of a potential future.
by Chantale
Fontaine
Folkvine.org Web Developer
Folkvine's
main goal is to create artists' websites as if they were conceptual extensions
of his or her artwork both visually and organizationally. To do this,
we attempted to act as channels through which the artist, if in possession
of our technical skills, would have created the website. This process
of channeling began with our immersion into the artists' communities,
lives, and artworks. We visited the artists' workspaces and participated
in community events. We collected images, video, and data about history,
lives, and cultures, and we viewed and discussed as much artwork as was
available. Finally, with pages of possibilities sketched, we commenced
the actuation of the site, making methodical use of our videographic,
photographic, and textual documentation to create a virtual environment
conveying the aesthetics of the artists chosen.
Consequently, Ruby Williams'
spontaneity provided us with our first challenge as we addressed her improvisational
approach. We discussed which painting should go where and how it may look
better if tilted more to the left more than to the right. Truly "letting
the mouse do the work"in Adobe Photoshop and never using a template
to lay out a new page in Macromedia Dreamweaver, 
the
final visual design reflects the essence of her Bealsville environment
by sharing the content and context of her work in her playful and impulsive
style. Conversely, we found in the preparation and symmetry of Ginger
LaVoie's quilt designs a prominent order, so we carefully preplanned her
site as a continuous design. Transmitting the tactility of LaVoie's work,
we invite the viewer to mimic her smoothing and caressing motions over
a virtual quilt to uncover hidden links. On Diamond Jim Parker's site,
we surprise the visitor with a full virtual miniature circus, complete
with sound and animation, and then we call on the user to further to uncover
Parker's obsession with circus history and his unique kit-bashing aesthetic,
while tossing fun and laughter into the mix. Funny sounds and bright animation
fill the Scott Family's site, in which interactivity is key to exploring
clown shoemaking. We invite the user to quickly create a clown shoe and
provide commentary and video exploring the actual process.
ﾠ
With
the advent of hypermedia and the popularization of the Web, designers
often use sound, animation, and interactivity at the sacrifice of usability.
However, "technology can't create value on the Web without content;
and good content is harder to create than to distribute"(Belle, 2001).
In our case, we already had a wealth of great content, but choosing the
best way to represent an artist virtually, while adhering to the artist's
aesthetic awareness, offered an inimitable challenge. One danger is the
possible over-application of the presentation technologies available to
us, like Macromedia Flash or Windows Media Player, requiring the user
to download and install a plugin for the browser. For many casual computer
users that task may prove confusing at best, complicating the usability
of the site and thus diminishing the user experience.
Hypermedia
differs and succeeds in its allowance for users' free choice in the navigation
of content through multiple links. When testing the sites, not only did
we ask ourselves and members of the communities involved, "Is this
particular element representative of the artist?" but also, "Is
the navigation to and from the element natural?" We uncovered many
of these obstacles at the community events that included wide-ranging
audiences who explored and commented on the sites in progress. A vital
part of the development lifecycle, testing, fixing, and retesting, continues
until we clearly hear the artists' voices.
by Alex Katsaros
Folkvine.org Technical Coordinator
Our endeavor to weave folklore into the World Wide Web relied heavily on fostering a collaborative environment, not only within our team, but also and perhaps more importantly, with our featured artists and their respective communities.
Aside
from requesting personal photographs and stories relevant to the featured
artists, we also solicited their appraisal of our web design and content
choices. We had four public viewings, one for each artist, mid-way through
the development of each site. At all four events, we sought constructive
criticism in the midst of the appreciative praise that personal friends
and family members had for the web sites. Sometimes the online medium
itself left the communities awe-struck and it took some coaxing to get
suggestions for changes. Nevertheless, we managed to collect useful feedback
using survey forms and made improvements to the sites accordingly.
When
it came to direct collaboration with our featured artists, many of our
teammates became participant-observers, and tried their hands at the art
forms we studied. Without this deeper "channeling" that Chantale
Fontaine describes in her essay, the materials we gathered (such as still
images, video interviews, and ancillary documents such as newspaper clippings)
would not have sufficiently delivered the aesthetic we aimed to convey
as we composed each web site. Having us channel their aesthetic was not
an obscure notion to our participant-artists, especially for Ruby Williams,
the "minister artist," who channels her own divine inspiration
through her painting.
As
we continued our work on Folkvine, I began to wonder: have we created
a work-of-culture, or have we merely worked-over a culture? My phrase,
"worked-over culture," suggests an exploitative relationship
rather than a collaborative one. I am certain, however, that the artists
became our friends and spiritual guides as we worked together, and they
trusted us with their art and life stories. Beyond meeting the challenge
to avoid exploitation, we also struggled to form the collaboration among
artists and technologies available. In other words, we explored technologies
needed to portray the essence of each artist's message, strength of character,
and vision of the world. Cameras were useful, and occasionally we handed
one to the artists themselves -- but when placing any footage in the context
of Folkvine, we knew that seeing as the artist truly required
a loyalty to their overall aesthetic.
In
summary, Folkvine serves as a collaborative performance of folklore research
and exhibition. As our team has strived faithfully to play our role with
our artist friends and their communities, we also realize that we constitute
an interpretive community of our own--subject to the pitfalls of representing
others. By facing these challenges, I take away lessons about texts and
technologies. When viewers arrive at the site, they will sense these elements
at play. And if we did our job well, the context (i.e. the tactile,
gestural, and so forth) also will rise to meet them somewhere between
their monitor and imagination.
click here to visit Folkvine.org >>>
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References
Belle, J. (2001, July). McLuhan
Redux: Is content king or commodity? EContent [Online], 1. Available:
http://www.econtentmag.com/Articles/ArticleReader.aspx?
ArticleID=4782
[2004, September 17].
Freedman, K. (2000). Social perspectives on art education in the U.S.: Teaching visual culture in a democracy. Studies in Art Education, 41 (4), 314-327.
In
the summer of 2003, Craig Saper and I wrote a grant to the Florida Humanities
Council to develop a website on Florida folk artists. We sought to portray
these artists and their communities in a way that they would choose to
represent themselves if they were web designers. Recognizing that this
project would take a team of people with a variety of skills, we looked
for experts in ethnography, folklore, art, videography, sound, web-design,
animation, computer science, and administration. We also ended up needing
people who could cook and set up stages, chairs, and laptops. Overlaying
all of these requirements was a desire to have individuals who knew how
to collaborate, raise interesting questions, and offer constructive criticism
of the group's work. To add to our university team, we needed Florida
artists willing to work with us and communities that would be responsive
to the project. We identified our artists, constructed a plan, and once
the grant was funded, we pulled our team together.
In
this on-going project our goals are: 1) to collaboratively meld the many
needed skills together to produce a project where we communicate the values
and content material important to an artist and his/her community; 2)
to effectively present the material in the aesthetic of the artist (and
his/her community when appropriate), and; 3) to raise questions concerning
online folklore and humanities scholarship as we moved through the process.
Media
technology never exists as a neutral conduit. Using print or the internet
changes not only the accessibility and presentation, but also the meanings
and types of messages.