our collective memories: as trans folx
ID: A collection of gifs show a wide array of trans folx. Marsha P Johnson starts the collection of images with white text stating "there was a time when they didn't even want me in stuff"
These gifs are pulled from the Giphy API. I was thinking about the term Sousveillance and how (we) the citizens are capturing images or memories of a collective history. I was thinking about how there are systems on the Internet that hold all of these histories that we actively archive into. I was curious about searching for terms like "black+men", "trans", "women", "cops" to see what we have collectively fed to this machine that stores all of this data about us.
Design Process
I think that the process was really important when discovering how to use this API. I wanted to show the steps that I took and the instances when the code failed to work - seemingly based on certain search parameters.
I wanted to allow folks to enter anything in the search to yield results however my code kept breaking when I allowed the queries to be more open. The images that you see are hardcoded. So I wanted to feel like an interactive experience that is a look into the collectice archive that is documenting trans lives on the internet. I also broke the constraints of the canvas. I know that it was supposed to be 600 x 600px but when I set it to that the images would not appear on the screen at all. Once I removed the canvas they would appear. This made me think of putting people in boxes and how these images collectively break the mold and would not be contained by those dimensions. They would literally disppear with those contraints.
I also wanted to use an API that examined the culture around us. I believe that memes speak to the way we communicate with each other on the internet (in 2021) and hold so much information through the compression of data. I have been curious about how gifs are like the new form of video and wonder what information is missing when we start to condense physical bodies into easily transferable bits of data.
Reflection:
I absolutely almost gave up on this assignment. I had admitted Failure to myself early today (12/17/21) but after our last class with Elizabet and receiving feedback from my classmates, I decided to tackle this API project from a new perspective. Loading API information and visualizing it is really difficult. I stand behind the choice to break the constraints of the canvas and to allow the images to display how they would naturally appear of the Giphy site.
Credits
I followed The Coding Train's Giphy API Tutorial
Giphy API Access and API keys webpage: Check out this link to learn how to use the Giphy API