dorian fraser moore

New Website for OCA

I've just launched a new website for The Office for Contemporary Arts Norway, you can see it at oca.no.

Portland Works

Early in December 2010 - just before I went on paternity leave - we launched a new website for Portland Works, an integrated metal works in Sheffield which is fighting for it's survival as a space for craftspeople, artists and small business to thrive. The tenants of Portland Works are attempting to raise funds to buy the building, run it as a co-operative, and restore it to it's former glory, whilst keeping it as a working building. We are happy to have been commissioned by Sheffield University to build this website to try and keep local crafts alive and developing.

What I've been up to

It's been a busy year, but I haven't really said much about what I've been up to. As ever I am  working on multiple projects in parallel, all of which seem destined to be launch later on this year. I've also been doing a lot of website maintenance on existing projects.

Things I've done of late that haven't been announced on here are the website for the Rhyzom network, a refresh of somewhere's website, a number of updates to the what will the harvest be website for the new growing season, a re-freshing of the layouts on my personal website and an update to Rossi & Rossi's website to represent their classical artworks, and the first phase of the Lawson Park Electronic Library, created with Guestroom for Grizedale Art's Lawson Park residency space.

I've also been setting up some new servers and migrating sites and email to new places, and carrying out a large number of updates to my CMS framework. 

Currently in progress is work on:

• Afterall - updating it to represent their advertisers better, to apply more functionality to their article layouts, and to hook into the subscription system provided by University of Chicago.
• Spatial Agency - refinements of the database, and working on the mapping of connections between the various practices.
• Grizedale Arts - extending the documentation of their contributors and works, and creating a visualisation of how their activities interconnect. 
• Lawson Park - building the backbone of a small social network to help residents at the space to document their activities whilst staying there.
• International Village Shop - A web representation of the various experiments and models of shop commerce carried out by a range of groups I collaborate with; public Works, somewhere, Grizedale arts and Myvillages.org
• Colchester Inn - Extending public works website representing the various strands of action for the current phase of this project.

I've also recently been commissioned to work on a number of new projects:

• Portland Works - A website to represent a historical Sheffield building and the makers who work there, and to help them in their aim of buying the building and preserving the space.
• Office for Contemporary Art Norway - Redevelopment of their website to freshen it up and make the content more accessible
• Florian - website for Austrian Jewellery designer and maker
• Agri-Cultur - A new website representing various art projects that are connected to agri-culture and farming.

So, keeping busy. Hence why so quiet with the updates!

Rossi & Rossi Gallery Website

I've recently completed a new website for Rossi & Rossi, a London gallery who specialise in Contemporary and Classical Asian artists and artworks, from traditional Sculptures, Thangkas and Masks through to contemporary originals, prints and photographs from leading artists.

public works

I'm pleased to have just launched a new website for public works, a group I've been working with for over 3 years. Indeed this website was actually completed about 18 months ago, but the very busy people at public works have struggled to keep up their ambitious ideas of creating a comprehensive project archive whilst also creating a massive body of new works. Indeed I've collaborated with them on about 5 projects over the time this project has gestated, and, in pixar style, there have been 2 project babies!

It's a lesson that I try to take with me to every project - data entry is a huge task, especially when it comes to collating historic information that only exists in people's memories and can't easily be given out to a junior member of staff to create.

For this site that's combined with trying to find a way to present the project as much as a process as in texts.

Spatial Agency

Spatial Agency is a project by the Agency unit based at Sheffield University School of Architecture, looking at alternative architecture practises and how they are interconnected. The website is a home for an ever growing database of organisations, projects, publications and events and their interconnections, with the aim of providing a clear picture of what's is going on where.

The first phase of the site has been up since September 2009, and the content is slowly being refined and published as each record is completed.

Avant Gardening

Launched in late 2009 www.avantgardening.org is a website representing an arts and environment project which encourages community involvement in environmental issues via a programme of events and activities.

Afterall

We've recently launched the new website for contemporary art journal and research publishers Afterall, at www.afterall.org. It's been great to work with the team at afterall and with graphic designers AtWork, but without much time to breath it's now on with the next set of work, as well as extending out some of the features on this over time.

'i am here'

To coincide with the launch of Fugitive Images'  'i am here' installation we have created a website to represent the project and provide some background on it. The website is a launching point for further documentation of the redevelopment of Haggerston Estate and it's effect on those living there, the surrounding area and the people who occupy the redeveloped space, and will extend and expand over the next years.

We've been involved in realizing a virtual representation of the installation, and looking at how the stories behind the project can be extended on-line, as well as a bit of graphic design.

Watch & help 'A New Kind of Garden' grow...

The Useful Arts are pleased to - belatedly - announce our latest work with Nina & Karen at somewhere, for their community gardening project in Stratford, East London. What Will The Harvest Be? is an experiment in creating a productive vegetable garden for the community, started from some waste ground that the local residents wanted to see developed.

Over the next 3 years the process of growing and working together will be document via the website, and will build up anecdotal experiences from those involved in the garden, and document what's involved in growing your own in a shared urban environment.

We are particularly happy with the webcam archive and timelapse player, which is still a bit of an experiment and we've got some refinements to do on the interface. The plant database is, similarly, coming along nicely.

Grizedale Arts Website

Grizedale Arts is a residency and commisioning organisation based in the Lake District, who's practise is "adding complexity to confusion". We have been working with them for a number of years on various projects, and are pleased to have launched a new website for them at the same time as their new residency space at Lawson Park was launched. As ever this is a work in progress and part of an ongoing relationship, so expect it to develop and transform over the coming years.

head to toe for ross phillips at the design museum

Head To Toe is a site specific installation by Ross Phillips for Super Contemporary at The Design Museum, featuring a network of kiosks capturing video clips of eitehr head, body, and legs which are then sent to a pod at the Design Museum where they can be viewed in the style of the classic children's book, flipping through the videos to see each clip.

We're happy to have built much of the software for this installation, including the video processing infrastructure, data synchronisation, moderation and web and kiosk interactives.

Visit the pods at the Design Museum, Selfridges, Covent Garden or Ideas Store and get yourself in on the action.

colchester inn website

Completed earlier this year, but only just put live, is a new website for public works project Colchester Inn. This is the first stage of a project with First Site in Colchester, working with local communities to create works for the new First Site building.

The website is part blog, part mapping tool, part documentation of process, designed to show how the network of people involved in the projects grows and ideas are formed. To deal with this it switches from the standard blog format to something a bit more dynamic.

Whilst it uses horizontal navigation which is something I don't usually agree with - it goes against usability norms - here I am using it because it best represents a timeline, and more clearly delineates the entires. JavaScript is used to make the interface work more dynamically.

With any luck this will turn into a more full mapping project in the future, with more cross linking and different visualisations of the underlying structures and relationships created throughout the process.