What is America?
Process:
This was our exhibition project for Amy's class. The project description was open ended, we were ever to take it in whatever direction we wanted to. I worked with Leland Clemmons to build art in the form of a website based on commerce being the center of America. We originally wanted to do a art piece entitled, "The Different Side of America", however, we ran out of time and had insufficient materials to make our original idea a reality. I blogged about our drafting and revision process for this project on my blog. To supplement our projects, both me and Leland wrote a 3-5 page Artist Statement regarding our piece. My artist statment was on Brands vs. Generics and the comparison between the two.
Product:
Artist Statment
Screen Shot of Art Page (Click to see the webpage, only works on Apple Safari Browser)
Art Piece (on the landing page for the project)
Reflection:
This project was one of my least favorite of the year. It was put lowest on my priority lists as I tried to finish my biology project and math project before I even touched this project. Leland did the majority of work on this project because website design is his field. I did the artist piece of America and the stock ticker that shows up on the landing page for our project.
I did learn a lot during the process of making this page. I learned about Yahoo! Pipes and RSS Feed manipulation, how the stock market works, and that store brands can sometimes be better than name brands. After doing this project and taking the time to research store brands, I am more open to the idea of buying store brands for cheaper. Before doing this project, I always though all store brands were inferior to the national brand because it was cheaper. However, I learned that the one of the main reasons the store brands are cheaper is because of the advertising costs required to market the national brand drives the price of the national brand product up.
It was interesting to learn how for some products, the store brand actually receives a better review on the blind taste test. I'm ready to try Dr. Skipper!