One of the obstacles I face as a Digital Media student and nascent professional is that of recognition. I can produce interesting work in my classes, but I need to be able to get my work out there for the world at large to view. Thankfully, in this modern day and age we have a collection of tubes known collectively as "The Internet" that exist for just such a purpose.
Of course, it isn't quite so simple as just pressing a button and having a fully-formed attention-grabbing site instantly appear at the top of the list on a Google search for "awesome." Luckily, in this modern day and age we've exhumed much of the wisdom of the ancients to guide us into the future. Especially when we don't understand a word of this wisdom. To this end, I have chosen a passage from the Egyptian Book of the Dead to translate, hoping to unearth a prophecy directly correlated to my problem.
Pictured: The Farmer's Almanac, circa 1650 BC
To be specific, my problem is (ripping off my own eloquent prose from a previous post): "I need to establish a corner of the web for myself and optimally build it enough relevance to show up on peoples' radar."
Alright! Time to start my American-style translation, where I look at the pictures and attribute them to whatever makes the most sense in my head (this is a similar technique to speaking slowly and loudly in English when in foreign countries in the belief that this makes you understandable).
A Google search informed me that whether one reads hieroglyphics left to right or right to left is dependent on the direction the animals are facing. Already we're off to a good start, as my animals are facing to the left here which means I can read this left to right. And what's more auspicious of a start than a star? I can clearly extrapolate from this that the ancient Egyptians refer to my rising star in the world; though based on the tiny man with the humbly up-stretched arm beside the star I shall infer that my methods must be tempered by modesty, a sentiment with which I concur.
The glyphs following these two are far less immediately identifiable, which caused my eye to wander across the paragraph. Immediately I noted that persistence of a semi-circular platform upon which a few smaller symbols or birds were perched. The best analogy this sparked is: I should identify the platform with which to deliver my varied content.
Now, I currently have an ad-hoc portfolio site of sorts set up with the free service flavors.me, which makes it extremely easy to plug various services in (like this very blog) and construct a simple personal site without any code. I've debated as to whether or not this is sufficient.
Luckily, the Book of the Dead seems to have an opinion on the matter. There is a recurrence of a symbol that looks somewhat like an inverted 'L', which is very probably a snake. Three instances of this symbol coil around small sigils, while the fourth points to what appears to be a cross. As it currently stands, my portfolio site is sort of a crossroads, where all of my content approaches from different directions and jumbles together at the middle, with only pseudo-integration. In order to most effectively display my work, I need to encapsulate it within a single site that coils around all of my content.
Upon closer examination of the passage, there is one symbol that stands at a jarring contrast to the others and thus seems significant. Viewing the hieroglyphics as a whole with an unfocused eye caused the single framed image to jump out at me. The frame implies structure, or a guiding influence; based on my previous web endeavors, I don't think that building a site from the ground up would be any better for me than using a flavors.me site. So, I think the best thing to do would be to use an existing structure, but at least centralize all of my content on said structure.
The squiggly lines peppered throughout the passage remind me of the placeholders I use for any text or words in rough thumbnails; I've heard good things about Wordpress, so that's the first thing that comes to mind off of that association. Therefore, it appears I have a new avenue to investigation in regards to my web relevancy!
Thank you, ancient Egyptians. Don't think that this makes up for the generations of slavery, though. That wasn't cool.
Closing thoughts on this exercise:
I rather enjoyed this exercise, as it encouraged me to make wild conclusions about tiny pictures I don't actually understand, and there's nothing I enjoy more than wild conclusions. Actually, I used to play a computer game when I was younger, some semi-educational game that was focused around Ancient Egypt; I have no idea what game it was, but I loved it to death. I suspect, however, that the designers had no idea whatsoever how to translate hieroglyphs, and were just making it up as they go along. Hey, if it worked for them, works for me.
A short note about my creative environment:
I'm sitting on my dorm room's couch at the moment, which I've been doing since about 4:20. There's a nice amount of sunlight streaming in through the opened blinds. The couch isn't very comfortable, but it's better then the strange rocking-desk-chair-hybrids that sit at our desks in Canaris. It's pretty cool in here despite the oppressive heat outside, temperature control units being the best invention since that circular thing that lets carts move about. I'm listening to music on my terrible iPod earbuds for some reason instead of my nice stereo gaming headphones; sheer volume is drowning out any noise my roommate might be making in the room behind me.
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