Channeling Aesthetics in the Digital Realm: Designing Virtual Homes for the Artists of Folkvine.org

As escalating bandwidths and technologies expand the World Wide Web, media-rich web design offers new opportunities for scholarly discussion and presentation. A collaborative effort between a videographer, a web programmer, faculty members, and graduate and undergraduate students, F olkvine produced websites representative of four Florida artists while rethinking online scholarship. Appointed lead web designer, the culmination of my research rests in my designs profiling the lives and work of four Florida artists: the painter and farmer, Ruby C. Williams, the Hawaiian quilter, Ginger LaVoie, the clown shoemakers, Wayne and Marty Scott, and the late circus historian, clown, and miniature circus creator, Diamond Jim Parker. Exploring the various perspectives from which we could virtually exhibit the artists, we chose to create the sites as a reflection and extension of the artists\u27 lives and work. In order to fulfill this goal, I attempted to act as a neutral conduit through which the artists\u27 aesthetics could pass into the digital realm. As an artist myself, I consider how I approached this channeling and how it in turn affected my aesthetic notions according to three major themes in digital art: virtual identity, space, and home

Folkvine.org: The Challenges of Presenting Folk Art On-line

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