Digital Wanderings Pt 2 - Novelty Outside of the Algorithm
There is unlimited wonder and whimsy online, but there’s something special about those places that offer inspiration without risking getting caught up in the infinite scroll. For the second installment of this series, we'd like to share a few places our team returns to when we're looking for a way to shake up our digital routine. Here is a list of unusual sites that offer a place to rest your eyes when you are in need of a fresh glass of inspiration but would rather not open the firehose of information that is social media.
When you’ve hit a creative wall, this site could offer an antidote. Oblique Strategies is the digitized and randomized collection of the 1975 deck of cards created by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt. Originally intended for writers and musicians, the shared vocabulary between music composition and visual arts makes this a great resource for alternative paths of decision-making. Usually a suggestion, aphorism, remark, some cards could seem absurd out-of-context… which is often an immense help in solving an artistic dilemma.
A fresh alternative to hunting for visual inspiration on social media, this site lets you explore a collage made from wikipedia images. Users can shuffle through randomized collages or search specific keywords, with the refreshing lack of ai imagery making it feel reminiscent of the heyday of Google Image search. This site offers a game-changing version of word-association exercise: search with a keyword, glance at the results, and choose a new keyword based on what catches your eye.
Nasa's Astronomy Picture of the Day.
It is often helpful to take a step back from a project to get some perspective, this site offers the biggest step back possible. Usually featuring stunning photographs of our cosmos, the site also posts occasional videos. As a sneak peak, the bottom of the page will have the title of tomorrow’s photo, and titles like “Cosmic Bat,” and “Pillars of Creation,” are sure to ignite your curiosity.
If you need a heavy dose of whimsy, take this one for a spin. Gradient Horse is an interactive project by Michail Rybakov that, at first glance, feels partly like an amateur web coder’s homework assignment, and partly a compelling space for community. In many ways it is a digital version of cave painting, the beauty is in the simplicity of the depicted animals and seeing everyone's individual expression contribute to the whole. Simply draw a horse and watch it run with what other people have drawn, live from around the world. The artistic constraints (especially the literal spatial constraints on mobile) offer a nice way to create quickly without pressure.
A nearly 30 year old archive that describes itself as a “pirate shadow library consisting of hundreds of thousands of freely downloadable avant-garde artifacts. By the letter of the law, the site is questionable; we openly violate copyright norms and almost never ask for permission…UbuWeb is a purposely unstable library, a conflicted curation, an archive assembled by embracing the fragmented, the biased, the subjective, and the incomplete.” Experimental film, sound, and ephemera: the opposite of media watered down by an algorithm.
​
​
​
Artists, designers, and creative thinkers often have a complicated relationship with the internet. We rely on it constantly, but some of the most meaningful discoveries happen when we step outside the main channels of media. Whether you're working in brand identity design, logo design, website design, motion graphics, video production, or animation, inspiration is everywhere.
This is a part of our series highlighting our team’s go-to digital environments when we're searching for fresh ideas, unexpected references, and new creative pathways. Stay tuned for more!
