Designing a (world wide) Web View
Question: Where are you when you are online?
Answer: In a factory/lab making robot clones of myself, of course.
When considering my normal online activity, the aspect that interest me most is the number of different protocols that I can use at any given time.For instance, right now I am browsing several web pages in Firefox (port 80), I am on MSN Messenger and AIM with Gaim (5190, 6901, 6891-6900), I have an SFTP connection open to Steel (22), I am listening to an internet radio station with iTunes (8000), and I am in an IRC channel with VisualIRC (6667). This is a total of fifteen ports, and Windows is probably doing all sorts of secret Big Brother shit in the background as well.
In each case, the persona that I present to the internet is different based on the demands of the protocol. For instance, on instant messaging ports I behave in one way - generally sending and receiving a roughly equal number of packets, mostly consisting of ASCII text. On HTTP and Shoutcast ports, I generally receive many more packets than I send. On IRC I am generally more socially aware of the things that I say, as there armies of hardcore, l33t hackers waiting for an excuse to flame me into oblivion, while on AIM my conversations are generally more casual and open. However, each persona ultimately represents me.
In all of the preceding cases, the personas that I present are "live" - that is, they no longer exist on the internet if I close the application that is broadcasting it. However, when I upload this web page to a server (which, presumably has a much more persistent presence), it stays there and has a life of its own, even when I am not actively paying attention to it. Similarly, if I were to start an FTP server, in some subtle but important ways, it would be a persistent representation of me. This is the phenomenon that I attempted to represent with this movie.
So, without any further ado, I present:
A Nice Day (for making robot clones and sending them out into the world) 9.7M
A Nice Day (hi-res version) 38.1M