About This Website

The visitors to and viewers of this website, www.fuckyeah.biz, may find that it is somewhat unusual in light of the conventions that dominate the look, feel and function of the majority of typical internet presentations. These deviations from the norm were quite deliberately effected, so perhaps a few words of explanation are in order concerning the design and navigation of this site.

A brief perusal of any of a number of extremely popular websites, such as msn.com, Yahoo, or Facebook, reveal a predominantly rectilinear style remeniscent of the layout format long used by newspapers, magazines, and other traditional organs of the press. Such a utilitarian presentation technology indisputably has its use, if you will, promoting the rapid and efficient placement of textual and pictographic data on the screen or page. But it by no means represents the entire spectrum of experience which may be conveyed via the Internet, or better, the browsing window, that ubiquitous portal into other worlds. Therefore the standard dicta regarding the so-called principles of "correct web development" have been cast aside for the purposes of this site, and the attempt has been made to create a presence uniquely suited to its "content". And this word, content, is here somewhat guardedly used, since content and container, like form and function, ultimately distill into the same essence. Well, that is how this author views such matters, at any rate. And so the attempt has been made, in the construction of this web presence, to allow the balance of concern to come down heavier on the side of integration of form, and come up lighter on the side of technological efficiency; all this within the context circumscribed by what are by and large everyday web technologies: HTML, CSS, the usual scripting languages (PHP, Perl, javascript, so forth and so on), and the ever-growing selection of available browsers. These concepts will undergo some expansion in the following paragraphs.

The first question which needs be asked, the first point to be considered, in light of the preceeding paragraph, is this: Why the web? Why use web-based media at all, especially when such paramount importance is placed on complete freedom of multi-media expression, a freedom to attain precision of layout to a degree which demands control over even such mundane details as the exact placement of a word or phrase on the page, much in the way a painter, collagist or photographer seeks to attain a certain exact balance and proportion in his or her compositions? Such inquiries will hopefully resonate even more strongly with the reader who has had some familiarity with the design and experience browser-based presentation, and is familiar with the way items seem to re-arrange themselves in the viewing window as its size is adjusted in the horizontal and vertical directions. Such automatic re-organizations, though exceedingly useful and even necessary for true multi-platform functionality, work at odds to the artist's sense of integrity of layout and composition. Indeed, the mark-up languages employed in the coded description of web pages are deliberately vague about the kind of exact details visual artists often need and expect to employ. But despite these difficulties, the Internet offers at least one thing unattainable without it: virtually unlimited and affordable distribution, and this available to anyone who cares to use the web for publication. This single fact is so compelling that it motivates one to try, despite the above-mentioned technological difficulties, to develop browser-compatible presentations of ever-increasing utility, integrity of form, and asthetic appeal. Certainly FUCKYEAH.BIZ strives for such qualitative advancement, as do many other websites on the Net today. Certainly the drive for such development lies in the universal reach of the Internet and the World Wide Web. Therefore the trade-off implicit in web technologies, i.e. world communication for expressive control, has been accepted for the purposes of this presentation, and the attempt has been made to develop a "look and feel" apropos, re-iterating previous phrasing, to its content and container. That is to say that the vast potential for web-based outreach more than compensates for the formal limitaions imposed on production values themselves; but within this context, every effort has been made to create a desired experience for the participant (read here user/visitor if you prefer a more usual parlance), even if it entails pushing the design across certain boundaries of convention to which most web sites adhere.

Accepting, then, that Internet and/or web-based presentation is essential, even if under certain circumstances somewhat awkward, the question which naturally comes to the foreground is just what is to be presented? And this is where the rub really lies, since this is where the implications of the constraints imposed by available web technologies immediately make themselves manifest. Where the rubber meets the road, so to speak. Integral to the discussion of the preceding paragraphs is the notion that the design of FUCKYEAH.BIZ deviates from that of more typical websites in certain essential ways. Just what these ways may be, or perhaps more to the point, just what is the intended content and container or form and function to which the design of FUCKYEAH.BIZ aspires, is logically the next thing to be addressed, and is the present topic. To this end the attempt will be made to give expression to the motivating forces driving the look and feel of this website, the inspiration for the overall aesthetic outlook of FUCKYEAH.BIZ. In the second paragraph above mention was made, by way of example, of three major commercial websites, viz. msn.com, Yahoo, and Facebook. A brief scrutiny of any of these three, or of any of the vast number of similar sites, quickly reveals a strict compartmentalilzation twixt images and text, the data of which each consists delivered as an essentially separate or distinct entity, though of course they may reference each other. Indeed such websites are often designed as a fixed set of what might be termed data buckets, into which information may be "poured" at will; then the buckets are re-emptied and filled again for the succeeding edition of the site. In point of fact, it cannot be denied that FUCKYEAH.BIZ makes use of similar techniques. But FUCKYEAH.BIZ aspires to a much tighter integration between imagery and word, and with any other media deployed as well. The inspiration for this approach lies in what is probably the most signigicant multimedia art form the world has created to date, which is here understood to be cinema. Motion pictures, especially when combined with text and sound, provide the basis for truly immersive expressive experience which this site seeks to convey, as best as possible, again within the bounds of readily available web technologies. Thus, instead of presenting text and graphics as data which may be slotted into pre-defined compartments, the asthetic design of the pages of FUCKYEAH.BIZ seeks to forge a single image out of different components of perceptual experience, incuding written word, sound, and both still and moving pictures. The purpose here is not to present the site audience with a more or less disjoint set of distinct information bites, but rather to, as seamlessly as possible, convey a unified, sensual, meaningful experience.