Ze on Ugly

23Aug06

Ze Frank, the hardest working man on the Internet, has done a great job of discussing how user-created media is challenging the standards created by traditional media. You can watch it here. On June 30th, 2006, Ze announced the “I Knows Me Some Ugly: Myspace Showdown” and challenged his viewers to create the ugliest myspace page possible. While at first glance this exercise may seem silly, it has a lot more to do with people experimenting with media production tools. He describes film and music editing as “languages of authorship” and, as Ze explains,

“As people start learning and experimenting with these languages of authorship, they don’t necessarily follow the rules of good taste – this scares the shit out of designers. In Myspace, millions of people have opted out of pre-made templates that “work” in exchange for ugly. Ugly when compared to pre-existing notions of taste is a bummer. But ugly as a representation of mass experimentation and learning is pretty damn cool.”

the show with zefrank