Yuliya Parshina-Kottas is a recent graduate of the ITP program at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. After a decade of working as an animator and designer for children's television, advertising, and multimedia museum exhibits, she is venturing bravely into the world of user experience, interaction design, and creative coding. I am thrilled to have Yuliya introduce her recent MediaLab project, Accessible Wayfinding, here on Digital Underground.

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In my last Digital Underground post, I discussed artist Cory Arcangel's Super Mario Clouds (2002), a digital artwork that stripped the original Super Mario Bros. video game of everything but the background and clouds. If your interest in digital-art copyism was piqued by that, then you should also know that there are many routes one can take to achieve this end result. Cory has already shared his process, and in this post I will outline my experience translating his image-based instructions. If all goes well, you will end up with your very own bespoke copy of Super Mario Clouds.

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The Museum's first Bulletin, published in November 1905, mentions a restaurant "located in the basement of the North side of the Main building. Meals are served à la carte, from 10 a.m.–6 p.m., and table d'hote from 12 a.m.–6.pm." (The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, Vol. 1, No. 1, Nov. 1905). The Museum Restaurant was located near the western end of what was then known as the Hall of Casts, accessible via a staircase leading to the basement (approximately where the current Public Cafeteria is now). By 1912 an entire renovation was planned for the restaurant, as "[it] has never been an attractive place to visitors, partly because of its location . . . but equally because of its dark, cheerless aspect, [and was] so far removed from the toilet rooms . . . [that it was] a serious drawback." (The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, Vol. 7, No. 10, Oct. 1912). Accordingly, these planned renovations highlighted "a rest-room for women, with a toilet-room attached, [including] wash-basins with hot and cold water, while a smoking room will be provided for men, also with lavatories" (ibid.).

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One of the many lessons I've learned in my first 10 months on the job at the Met is how much attention is paid to everything we do here. Having worked at Columbia Journalism School for two decades, I am familiar with the amount of interest journalists take in the activities of a major institution (especially when most alumni are journalists themselves).

Because of the Met's reputation, scale, and history, our activities get a lot of scrutiny. I wrote recently about the social media traction that we got thanks to the annual #MetGala, and the Webby Award for our Instagram account.

But nothing quite prepared me for the amount of press, blogger, and social media attention we've gotten for our recently updated image use policy.

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Ana Marva Fernández is a Brooklyn-based Mexican-American artist whose installations include found objects, photographs, and rapid-prototype works which explore the implications of art in society as we move towards the future. Her work tends to reference the tensions found in Mexico's political landscape, intertwined with a playful use of mystical characters. A guest artist at the Met's 3D Hackathon in 2012, Ana has produced a variety of works using the Met's collection as a starting point for her vision.

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Last week I had the opportunity to attend Internet Week New York, an annual gathering of speakers and events related to technology, business, and culture. Unlike other conferences I've attended, which are more focused on the museum sector, Internet Week provides a glimpse into the world of for-profit digital media projects and advertising issues, which I found incredibly relevant to the work being done in the nonprofit world as well.

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I began my internship in the Digital Media Department's Media Lab in the summer of 2013, after my first year as a master's candidate in the Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. With a background in music and multimedia performance, my first year at ITP was frankly mind-blowing: I learned a whole host of new technologies that opened up entirely new ways of approaching narrative, visual imagery, and audience participation, and my work in the Media Lab was propelled by this new outlook.

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It's been a memorable couple of Mondays for the Met's social media efforts.

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I'm thrilled to announce that the Met's Instagram account has been nominated for a Webby Award in the Social: Arts & Culture category! The Webby Awards, presented by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences (IADAS), honor excellence on the Internet. As a nominee, our Instagram account has been selected as one of the five best in the world in its category. The IADAS selects its Webby Winner in each category, but every nominee also contends for a "People's Voice" Award as selected by the voting public. You can cast your vote for our Instagram account through April 24.

In addition to the nomination, the Met is included as an honoree in several categories: our website is listed in the Web: Cultural Institutions category; our Twitter feed is listed in the Social: Arts & Culture category; and our Instagram account is listed in the Social: Best Photography & Graphics category. Finally, our web series 82nd & Fifth is listed in the Web: Art category.