Second Year

Community website

I’ve been working quite hard on my community website, gaminglove.net. I’m running VBulletin software, which I’m still quite unfamiliar with, but that’s slowly changing.

Still very unfamiliar with PHP code, which is causing me a few issues at the moment, as there are a few templates that I really need to change, namely the navbar template. There are a few easy fixes, but most don’t seem to be working too well, I may have to just completely remove the existing navbar and create my own, though I’d rather not as that will probably produce some very dirty code.

The wiki is progressing well, I’ve really done the absolute minimum on it, but luckily, there are members of the forum that know what they’re doing, and they’ve done a geat job so far. Having a few issues with my hosting which I’m trying to resolve, namely getting lots of database errors.

I’m getting good pageviews so far, averaging around 10k per day according to Google Analytics, which is nice, of course, the site being a forum means it’s bound to get lots of pageviews with active users.

Still have lots of work to do on it though.

Thinking about assessment 1

Thinking about the two quotes we’re going to be writing as essay on.

Marcel Duchamp said: “The creative act is not performed by the artist alone.” Do you think art is a dialogue?

I disagree about the creative act not being performed entirely by the artist, because it’s far too wide a blanket statement to make. A lot of art work is incredibly personal, and created by the artist for the sole purpose of self expression, works like that are do not necessitate interaction from any other person. Of course it’s hard to say properly, because an artist will be getting influences from everything around him or her self, so it’s not solely performed individually, because other people are influencing the work.

As far as art being a dialogue, yes, I think it is, although again, it really depends on the piece, some artworks are a great deal more thought provoking than others.

Pablo Picasso said: “They ought to put out the eyes of painters as they do goldfinches in order that they can sing better.” What does he mean and do you agree?

I believe he means that without sight, an artist would have to experiment far more with their work, and would therefore produce work that is a great deal more exciting than their current work. It is, of course, bollocks, because they’d probably just end up walking into a fire or something similarly idiotic. All realism aside, I don’t really agree with his statement. While it would help your average artist who lacks the ability to critically think about his work, it would be unnecessary for great artists, who do not let the pure visual side of art distract them from a particular piece.

More thoughts on the matter when I put my mind to it some more.