Class Writings


J.R. Carpenter - Handmade Web

The term “handmade web,” as used by carpenter, is meant to encapsulate webpages that are made by people rather than corporations. Carpenter likens the process of creating websites to bookmaking, and the processes of creating handmade print materials. It’s very interesting thinking about the future of the internet, and holding onto aspects of the web that feel handmade. When I think of 95% of the sites I interact with on a day to day basis, they’re corporate and created through other website generators and website builders. Carpenter is advocating for the slowness of the web, for thinking about labor and the physical body, engagement, and mindfulness.

Laurel Schwulst - My Website is a Shifting House

Schwulst’s writing is beautiful. I personally really enjoyed this reading. I have read this essay before, but its helpful thinking about all the possibilities of what a website could be, at the very beginning of this class. Schwulst shares that there are so many possibilities with creating web design - a website can be a room, a shelf, a plant, a garden, a puddle. It’s whatever the creator would like to make of it. There is so much to explore, and this reading makes me feel inspired to experiment and take risks. Also sparrows discussing the future of the web is funny.

Callum Copley - A Friend is Writing

The user experience of the site was really confusing and distracting, my eyes couldn’t focus on the actual content of the reading. Even as I write this response my eyes keep getting dragged to the pings and pretty colors. The experience of trying to wade through the content is what it feels like to be inundated by social media and text notifications all the time. After a while the website becomes more manageable to take in as the page slows, and you can start to digest information. I think the site is trying to depict the limit of one’s concentration, especially in a world of notifications.

Frank Chimero - The Good Room

This was a genuinely joyful reading. Learning from the “character of places” was the part that stuck out to me the most as I got to explore the New York Public Library and the late NYC Penn Station. I thought these two examples of commercial and non-commercial spaces were really interesting. This reading discusses technology and its existence in our lives as a complicated and difficult thing. Our existence is tied to technology and this will never change, but we all have the ability to practice mindfulness and to question these relationships and these connections.

Aura Writing

The aura I chose to write about is hope. Hope is a powerful feeling. Perhaps it is one of the most powerful of human emotions, as the root of hope is desire, and desire is all-consuming. Hope keeps people moving forward. Hope creates possibilities in the mind. Hope directs thought into the future, and all things are possible through its lens. But hope can also be deceptive. The other side of hope throws people into oceans of despair, desperation, and misery. I have seen and experienced both sides and they are equally seductive.

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