Browsers define how we experience the web by laying down technical parameters. My most technically ambitious web animations, such as Beyond Stylization, run best using Firefox. This is no big deal. Actually, it comes with the turf on the web. One of the first rules of web design is to be sure to check out how one's pages look in different browsers. Thus the web remains a raw, fledgling medium. I am a miniaturist whose art suits the web. My works are meant to be viewed in a window on a webpage within a browser on a computer screen. I am drawn to low-resolution photographs because they lend themselves to the ghost-in-the-machine image processing I do. For instance, Beyond Stylization was rooted in a cell phone photograph of actress Victoria Masina that I downloaded from her MySpace profile page. Had I chosen a more professional photograph the processing would inevitably have taken a different turn.
The root image for Nuanced Permutations, the animation running above, is a lovely Harry Langdon photograph of Victoria Masina. Here the processing is less ghost-in-the-machine, more stark. Because Nuanced Permutations has far fewer frames than Beyond Stylization, it should run easily in most browsers.
© 2007 Peter Schmideg