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about
wavesculptor.com
about
wavesculptor.com



contents - all the contents links are to within this document except the site map link
finding your way aroundscroll to: top | previous | this | next

site structure
The site is built around five named windows existing simultaneously and interactively on your screen. The windows are just the containers of the documents you choose to look at. They can be viewed simultaneously, and any window that you can see a bit of can be brought to the front by clicking on it. Why multiple windows?

The five windows are: This document is in window1. If you went back to the navigation page and clicked another section, it would replace this page. If you followed an explanatory link on this page, it would open window4 in the top right of your screen.

If you enter the site other than by using the URL wavesculptor.com, then return to your entry page from a link within wavesculptor.com, you may find you have a duplicate of the page you entered at. This is because your entry window is effectively "unknown" to the scripting engine, so the page will be opened in its named window as well as the anonymous original. If you are bookmarking the site or refering someone else to it, it is simplest just to refer to the welcome page by using the URL wavesculptor.com.

using this multi-window web sitescroll to: top | previous | this | next

On the rare occasions you may try to open a specific link into your own new window, you may get the same page as the link is on. This is why, and how to do it.

The back or forward buttons only work within the window you are in. So you if you visited the personal page before you came here, that's where back would take you. But it will take you via all the places on this page that you've used the scrolling links to get to. Here's more about going back and forward. To get back to the welcome page click on any of the identical dolphins watching you speculatively from the top and sometimes bottom of the main pages. At every section heading on pages intended to scroll is a navigation bar to take you to a dolphin. The windows of pages intended to scroll are opened smaller than the welcome window or their parent window, so on computers where you can still see the edge of the window you want, you can just click on that. The Windows OS has a row of buttons at the bottom of the screen which you can click to show the window you want.

browser specific pages
You will see a different welcome window at wavesculptor.com if you arrive on an old browser or with scripting disabled. You will also see many plainer pages than with scripting, which is used to generate layered and organically-rendered text and interactive images. Since mid 2005, I have been rebuilding pages with integral scripted and non-scripted elements, gradually discarding the special no-script pages, because search engines, which generally don't read scripting, were refering visitors to the back-up pages rather than the carefully crafted flagship pages.


browser issuesscroll to: top | previous | this | next

known browser specific problems
A range of browsers not quite as old as the cut-off for the scripted version of the site, including Internet Explorer pre about version 4.5, will try to run the code of the site but get the pools introduction page in a muddle. The image that is supposed to be background is rendered over the text. These older browsers will also fail to display the pop-ups on the Pools Centrefold page. I haven't yet managed to get these pages to degrade gracefully on all platforms and browsers. So here is a link to the unscripted pool introduction page which should be readable in any browser.

Internet Explorer seems to reload the sculpture catalogue from the server when you alternate between viewing it from the main gallery, sub-gallery or image enlargement windows. Not a fault but a nuisance.

Internet Explorer on some Windows operating systems sizes the image enlargement window a little smaller than it should be, meaning the caption is lost off the bottom. Drag the window wider open manually, by the bottom right-hand corner, for now.

Some browsers still interpret layout and spacing differently. Netscape, for instance, inserts extra line breaks making titles flow out of their allotted space.

functional browser related differencesscroll to: top | previous | this | next
I set out with the intention to make wavesculptor.com equally accessible to both Navigator and Explorer browsers at a time when Standard Compliant browsers were just coming out and a lot of non-compliant ones were around. Navigator took me so much more time than Explorer trying to cater for it (like ten times as long) for generally less results to begin with. I came near to giving up with a late version 4 of it. Then a few simple discoveries have solved most of the problems!

Netscape 4 is essentially obsolete in 2004; it does not support 'hover', nor support the more recently updated pages. Netscape 6 and browsers that use its Gecko engine, like Safari, have different ideas to Explorer on page element spacing, making something that works for both a bit dicey. If you spot a page-layout foible that I have missed, please email me.

general introduction to the sitescroll to: top | previous | this | next

how it came to be here
This is the personal site of its constructor, Trev Val dolphin. Every aspect of the site and much depicted on it is entirely the work of the author unless credited otherwise. For more about me rather than the site, visit my personal page. The site exists because I am an artist but with technical fingers. Like most artists, I like others to see my works. The site has simply become another work, involving learning Javascript and the foibles of browsers as I go. My sincere apologies if it is not up to your professional standards, or still breaks your browser, despite having broken my head, my body and my spirit more times during its construction than some of the major works depicted on it. I have still enjoyed building it. (Mostly). It's become addictive, trying to bend a blockhead of a machine to be a bird or a smile.

what it aspires toscroll to: top | previous | this | next
My site probably breaks all the rules of everything to do with web authoring. Some of them I have aspired to break but most I've just broken cos I don't know they exist or I'm still learning how to comply with them. Part of my creative belief system is that if you put enough coherent energy into anything and then put the process into a feedback loop, something interesting will happen. This is the sort of thing I have tried to avoid creating. The entire site should be readable without the images switched on. It may even still be pretty in places. I have tried to keep it compact and navigable even though the text can be ebullient, the images plentiful and the enlargements, well, large... though I have put the sizes of most of the larger ones in the link. I am very aware of the problems of those in far flung places with slow connections. At the time I write this, I connect to the net via a mobile phone! The site wants to grow big: bigger than many corporate sites. Being on this page reading this, you're probably looking in a bit more detail, but I am content that most visitors will not look at a tenth of the site. I want it to be a public garden. A place you come to have your lunch, leaving an image from it on a monitor while you busy yourself nearby. Don't ask me for a catalogue or brochure. This is it.

appearancescroll to: top | previous | this | next

On a monitor where texture and form are essentially flat, and the flow of time is stilted for many by connection bandwidth, I have focussed my attention on 2D imagery and text. The opportunity to write hypertext simultaneously with aspiring prose is one that you are witnessing me grasping! Some of the pages, like this are more conventional in appearance, contrasting strongly with others, such as the welcome page. The contrast is intentional. I sigh when I see sites all made up of pages like this.

The site was originally designed for viewing on screens of 1024 x 768 pixels, but as soon as it was put on a web server it became apparent that many people still run smaller screens, so though the original larger backgrounds have been kept, the pages have been tailored either by putting the most important info in top left of the graphic area (as in the welcome page), or making the pages flexibly sized. Those with big screen estate will still be able to get screenfuls of graphics. I suppose by the time it's finished, all the old 800 x 600 monitors will have just about died out

Nevertheless, I expect most viewers will continue to peer at my site from within a clutter of often bloated and irrelevant borders, frames and buttons which they have little idea how to get rid of or use, on a machine that also astutely ignores my pleas to put them aside for the duration of their visit to this site, so the smaller version will serve for a while yet.

The whole site relies upon windows of specified features opened using scripting. I took this route in a vain attempt to specify the minimum of additional clutter and tool bars framing graphics windows which require as much screen area as possible and don't respond well to rectilinear stuff crowding in on them. This still leaves the problem that on Windows operating sytems, the operating system bars occupy so much screen space.

Several of the windows make extensive use of scripting to write the text in an organic fashion. This enables me to use text for speed and crispness where less "engineered" sites would use a graphic for the core textual information of the page which purists and visitors with slower internet connections would be aggrieved by.

contents of the site sectionsscroll to: top | previous | this | next

welcome/navigation page
Had a brightly coloured, very Photoshop background from 2000-2005, with a picture of a dolphin representing me and the "back" links from all the other pages. As of dark, mid winter 2005-06, the page has gone black, revealing the coloured sculpted text links more....

ephemera scroll to: top | previous | this | next
This page started life called stuff of the moment. It originally contained photographs unlikely to be of any interest to anyone who didn't know me: images I hadn't got time to do much with; however it has become tighter and less frequent and developed a sort of charecter of its own. Complete new sets of images are posted on the page whenever I have enough time and images that I want to share but not put in other dedicated or completed pages. I have started archiving the older pages and these can be accessed from links on the more recent pages.

personal scroll to: top | previous | this | next
Currently waiting for a rebuild after remaining more or less the same online for 5 years, despite many major life changes!

a gallery of the work of others scroll to: top | previous | this | next
A place for the work of people known to me which I think should be better known.

gallery of Val dolphin's first sculptural wave scroll to: top | previous | this | next
Nearly everything I made between 1988 and 1990-something, including several bits that I still have hopes of finishing or re-incarnating. An appallingly grid-like array of small (thumbnail) images on an irreproducible dark purple background. It loads fairly quickly whereupon the edges of the images can be individually blown off the sides of your screen by clicking on them. It goes hand in hand with an expurgated and tidied version of a text catalogue of descriptions of how traumatic it was to make all the works, accessible at the right point also by a mere mouse click. This section is all but finished. The but refers to some images not yet available to me and descriptions I have not yet had the correct combination of stimuli to write.

....drawings and photographs by dolphin - an archive scroll to: top | previous | this | next
This section was going to be only photographs but as I began to assemble it, I found some sketches, both from paper and direct to digital. I have dozens of documentary and creative original photographs that I'd like to share that don't fit into the other categories of the site. A Cathar fort with the moon rising over; a waif with crimson hair accosted in the Tate gallery, loadsa strange botanical bits that you'd think were something else and strange technical bits pretending to be botanical. The better images from my hard disc are now on-line but many remain to be scanned from prints and these will appear as the opportunity presents itself.

projects pending time, resources or patronage etc scroll to: top | previous | this | next
Some things are too important not to do just because they mean an investment that many are better placed than I to make. If you shovel heavy funds around, have a look at what I have on offer, compare it with my track record and your mandate and maybe contact me. That way, I can continue living and get on with worthwhile work, people can enjoy exciting arty things, and we can all feel accomplished.

email the dolphin at wavesculptor.com scroll to: top | previous | this | next
If you came here just looking for a contact link, here it is. You know the one about the kind of person that looks for the instructions on a bar of soap? But seriously, if you want to show me explicit improvements to my Javascripting, invite me to share your magnificent countryside or city, make constructive comments regarding the fields I work in, or just share the radiance of your personality with me, please do so.

Please don't send me any unsolicited multi-recipient email offering me any service, thing for sale or other advertisement. I live very simply and _never_ buy any of the few things I do buy as a result of unsolicited communication of any kind. On principle. Thank you.

dolphin organic swimming pools scroll to: top | previous | this | next
My personal page tells more about the name dolphin, which I took years before I ever built a pool. My swimming places section now has eight substancial pages, and is by far the biggest section of the site. Specific pool pages are accessed from the pools centrefold, a page of montaged images of all my pools, with pop-ups explaining them and links to the specific pages. The Centrefold itself has an introductory page which pops-up quickly while the detailed images are squeezing down the lines to your computer. Each of the three pools I have built now has a page illustrating its development, in accessible story format. They describe the pools' features and the events of each job. A subsidiary page describes a "wild fire" that surrounded my second pool during the drought while I was building it. My sculptural, biological swimming pool for the best-selling English author, Chris Stewart, is written up here. There are three more technical pages which explain the engineering and biology of the pools I am trying to build, and the reasons for going to so much trouble to avoid chlorine, not to mention many other standard pool components.

technical dabblings scroll to: top | previous | this | next
As an artist who sort-of-wasted many early years, talked into believing he would find success solely as a technical type, I at least have a solid one-legged yoga-pose in engineering. This means I can build structurally sound art that does not confront one with the weight of its soundness. And I propose to continue more as an artist with engineering skills than the reverse. My lesson from ventures over the last few years into function-led technology in which aesthetics is secondary, is that whilst I can do it and do it well, my predilection for unnecessary innovation and uniqueness can make for a hard time for those responsible for the maintenance of such technology. Here, I am particularly thinking of the installation I built for the well known alternative holiday centre, Cortijo Romero , near Granada, Spain.

So this section is mainly about environmentally friendly technology I have successfully built such as solar heating systems, a micro combined heat and power system, a solar oven... and somewhere along the line this sections blurs with the next....

zany scroll to: top | previous | this | next
If it all starts getting too serious, I shall climb in here with piles of my old crazy ideas and try and extrude them in internet shape. There's the set of engraved silver plate cake hammers with dishwasher safe handles and heads individually crafted for the optimum destruction of different kinds of gâteau.... If you still have an electric blanket with all those nasty vibrating emfs., give it to the dog, I'll be introducing the almost silent gas duvet.... Not to mention the nuclear tractor castor that brings together the concepts of the bed with an outboard motor and dazzling agricultural machinery to create the perfect vehicle for hopping between posh city nightclubs, available, of course, with optional self docking, self propelled 4x4 baby buggy.

constructing the sitescroll to: top | previous | this | next

tools
The site was built mainly on an Apple Macintosh G3 Powerbook. A G3 500MHz with 256MB of RAM and a 20Gb Hard drive running OS 9.04. The screen is a TFT LCD with 1024x768 resolution. This is why I use computers of this kind.

Fairly early on in trying to assemble the site, it became clear to me that if I used conventional tools, I would end up with a conventional looking site. Since I was getting frustrated and angry using applications like Dreamweaver, and am far from conventional in most things I do, I decided to abandon remote control and get stuck into the html and javascript myself. This was a slow process but is slowly beginning to pay-off.

So, the tools that I now use are BB Edit(Lite) - a text editor with serious search and replace capabilities, Photoshop - which I have been using since version 2 was current - and am thus pretty proficient in, Netscape and Explorer browsers on my Mac, and any other PCs I can get on line with, from time to time. To any PC users who would say the above seems a slightly cumbersome approach, I would say it's nowhere near as cumbersome as it would be on your machine! When I ask people why they work half blindfolded, their usual reply is because that's all they need to do, it's cheaper and everyone else does it. What can I say? Bill Gates has his hands in Apple as well as Microsoft now, and I'm dreaming of finding all my computing needs met on the Linux platform....

time framescroll to: top | previous | this | next
The welcome window dolphin graphic and background, specifically intended for the site, were begun as long ago as 1998 but my attempts to learn Javascript did not begin in earnest until summer of 2001.

I registered wavesculptor in autumn 2001, and shortly afterwards, hoisted the welcome page flag, only usable if you had a big enough monitor. This was followed by the first-wave sculpture gallery, also in tantalisingly inaccessible form to many.

Continuing the job from remotest Spain, I dashed-off the ephemera page, originally named stuff of the moment. This started with a couple of all-night stints, in order to share my scenic travels with loved ones. Then I had to pat the already proving visual dough more into bun than loaf form for the small gobbed. In January to March 2002, I wrote the first version of this page, the swimming pools overview page, the story of the first pool and most of my personal pages.

An important target was to get as much as possible of the site up before the summer 2002 publication of Chris Stewart's second book, in which I feature as the constructor of his "eco folly", by which time the folly itself will also be at its best, I hope.

Bit by bit, the rest of the site is coming into flower. As of the end of 2003, I have given the site a bit of a shake-out, and put up the first minimal edition of the page of my 2D work. The engineering section is on the slab, but seems to be keeping ahead of my attempts to tame it, and I have serious doubts whether I will ever put up the zany section before I am completely geriatric....

99% of text and images on this site
are intellectual property of Trev Miller
request to copiers		 page history
edition 1.4, dated 2007.03.05
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