The project that I proposed for this class was to create a website. The purpose was to, and remains to be, an interactive extension of my artwork and creative side. The process in finding a template that best fit my personality as an artist was extremely tedious!! I managed to find one on Themeforest that had the minimal look I was going for and it had pretty good interfacing as far as maneuverability. Using Dreamweaver with the purchased template has been a huge learning experience, looking up tutorials, google questions, and troubleshooting various functions have been a large part of the process too. The technical issues are the main drawbacks to why building the website has taken so long to complete. Sizing images properly, and resizing images that I have already, is necessary and tedious.
In addition to the website, I have expanded my online presence on facebook and twitter, after finally getting a twitter account only three weeks ago!! Wow, what a new medium! It has been very difficult entering into that realm of media. There is definitely a way in which to construct a tweet, and let’s be honest, I don’t get it. Perhaps never will, and that’s alright by me. The facebook updating has been very interesting as well, since that is another site that needs to be updated on a regular basis. Another facet that can be difficult to deal with is the inconsistency of the different sites in names. Twitter is stephosaur8, facebook is thatstephanie, and my web page is stephosaur.com. I am trying to incorporate stephosaur into the names, and having them all match, so I am trying to get all of these sites under one umbrella. I am also trying to get my instagram to have more pictures of my art, but most of my art is back in Michigan, so I am working on getting some better images. This idea of having all of the social media tying together keeps me going.
Through the process, I have come to see the differences in each media and the different language that each uses. This past weekend, I attended a creative storytelling workshop at UO’s Portland campus. Since it was an event with both professionals and students, the student were asked to maintain an online presence during the two day class. While I admit to being a bit rusty being on my phone during interesting seminars, I did my best at what I thought was good, quality posting. Much to my surprise, someone from the workshop came over to me and said that I need to post more things like another one of the students- meaning that while I was indeed posting, it wasn’t in a “twitter language” and I had to try and have my posts resemble “normal” twitter posts. This story prompts the idea that I should already know, that different social medias are vehicles for different modes of communication. If on is not immersed or take the time to understand this communication, the lines can get blurred and the communication can lose meaning or emphasis. I would actually like to know if anyone else has/had this problem when exploring a new social media outlet.
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