*baby pink*

This post is a summary of my midterm project for Live Web.

Concept: “Webcam Zoo”

Webcam Zoo is a website that aggregates streaming and live videos of different animals from zoos and parks around the world to offer a collective viewing experience 24/7. The concept is based on my experience with animal webcams. I like to watch animal webcams and streaming channels (i.e. Shiba puppycam on UStream). But I’ve been frustrated that I had to visit different sites and channels to keep up with all animals. So I thought of creating a site where I have access to my favorite animals online at once.

URL: http://itp.nyu.edu/~ji405/liveweb/webcamzoo/login.php (Works on Firefox and Safari. It does NOT work on IE)

Webcam Zoo, my midterm project for Live Web

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I was reading an article on boingboing about an incredible illustration by Chris Ware for The New Yorker magazine, and I had to post this to my blog.

It’s beautiful. Here’s a link to the article: http://www.boingboing.net/2009/10/27/chris-wares-new-york.html

Chris Ware's New Yorker cover

For Cabinets of Wonder this week, I walked around Chelsea Art District and went to a building called “ARTS Building” where 19 galleries are located. At a glance, this building looks like one of the typical manufacturing houses or office buildings in Chelsea, because there is no obvious sign or indication of art galleries except the name “ARTS.” Without the help of a friend with his map enabled iPhone, I would have never known that those galleries existed.

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I went to a newly-opened Museum of Chinese in America (MoCA) as a field trip for Cabinets of Wonder. After more than 20 years of collecting artifacts and materials about the life of Chinese in America, the museum was reborn on September 23 as a modern place designed by a renowned architect Maya Lin.

My first impression: a wine bar

Who did say a museum couldn’t be a wine bar? The new MoCA does not look like what I normally associate a museum with. There is no sign that says “MoCA is here”. There is no banners about current exhibitions. People can either miss this museum, or mistake it for a wine bar. I was the former by the way.

MoCA storefront. Is it a bar or a museum?

Notes

I’m going to jolt down notes from my visit. I will update this section as I remember more…

• I liked a bare-bricked, skylit atrium and “windows” between bricks that function as a screen on which videos are projected as if someone’s looking down the atrium. It feels like an Americanized old Chinese house.
• Rooms were too dark to read written materials.
• If one of MoCA’s missions is to become a platform for cultural dialogue among local communities, I wondered if the museum is too stylish for locals to casually stop by.
• I liked a collective storytelling website that was available at the museum’s interactive kiosk. It is a site with stories submitted by Chinese in America. Submissions are responses to following three questions: “What was your journey – your experience coming to and iving in this country?”, “What has the word ‘home’ meant to you living in the United States?” and “What are the stories you have head about the first members of your family to arrive in the if you have a multi-generational history?” There was one American-born Chinese who said, “I was born and raised in the US. When people ask me where I’m from, I tell them I’m American. They usually give me this look as if they expected me to say that I’m Chinese. I’m American.” What is the role of museums like MoCA for multi-generation Chinese whose identities are almost 100% American?

The Cooper-Hewitt Museum, National Design Museum is my favorite museum in New York City. As a design nerd, I love checking exhibitions about current design at a gorgeous townhouse on Sunday morning, and walking along the Central Park afterwards. I like the fact that exhibitions feel “manageable” and “digestible” in this two-story townhouse. I can finish two exhibitions in an hour or less.

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For Cabinets of Wonder, I went to the Tenement Museum in Lower East Side with Liesje, Mustafa, and Eyal. The museum promotes tolerance and historical perspective through interpretation of some of estimated 7,000 working class immigrants who resided in the building between 1863 and 1935. Read more

My initial sketch for the Webcam Zoo

Out of several ideas for the midterm for Live Web, I decided to run along a fun path: creating a webcam zoo. I’m envisioning this being a webpage aggregating different live videos and constantly-updated images of a various species from zoos, aquariums, national parks, farms and personal residences.

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