Instead of discussing “articles”, I am going to discuss “projects”, since that is what my journal is really about (refer to the previous post).
The Project I am Discussing is Blue Velvet, By David Theo Goldberg & Stefka Hristova -
Design by Erik Loyer
You can view Blue Velvet Here.
Blue Velvet is one of the projects in the Difference article of this journal. It is a flash animation that I feel is the best of all I’ve seen so far in this journal. It is about Hurricane Katrina and discusses in the introduction how it dives into the history of New Orleans, making the viewer aware that the disaster of Katrina was not just an act of nature but a complex web of political and social histories.
The actual project Blue Velvet captivates the viewer from the beginning with a well made static image of a cityscape, with a red button in the lower right corner with the word “begin.” Once you click it, text starts falling from the sky and going in and out of focus as it moves around the screen. There are very peaceful sounds of the ocean.
If you click on one of the words, everything changes. The word falls through the cityscape, turning it shades of gray instead of shades of blue and green, while the sound instantly changes to what sounds like an African drum circle. To explain everything else that happens in this complex transition would take a while, but basically the whole point of view of the screen lowers, so that the viewer feels that he is in the earth, and a short article is given relating loosely to the word that was originally clicked.
The evidence that this project points out refers mostly to how segregated New Orleans was before the hurricane and how this has come to be over the years. Because of this segregation, there was more hazards and less assistance or safety measures taken in the poorer areas like the 9th Ward.
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Chris - as a summary of the site/project, this is fine; helpfully detailed in terms of operations. There is a quality of evaluation to your writing as well. All to say, the writing testifies to a certain extent of engagement, immersion in the project.
But what do you think of it? Did you find it impactful, revealing? Curious: how it is different that reading an article about the same thing? Does the information land with a different intensity? More meaning? How does _your_ activity transform your experience of or understanding of with this information, knowledge?
I wonder if there is something too literal about the entry into the site, the spill of the text. Calamity! etc. Does such a site have an obligation to reflect its subjects in such ways? What it to be illustrated - a specific situation, a state of being?
Maybe I sound wary. But as you are immersing yourself in this terrain, the terrain that Vectors billboards, you tell me.
I'd like to hear more of you in the next/last post. Your summary here is fine, to the point, helpful as a start of an introduction. But I'd like you to couple that with a sense of your experience, your ideas around the project you are considering. What are the advantages or reasons for presenting the information this way? Does interactivity facilitate understanding? Is this the way to be interactive? What do you think? Relay your experience.
It'd be helpful here, for instance, to have heard about what you thought you learned, how you found the site to navigate - your experience and thoughts.
This posts needn't be neutral platforms; I encourage you to do more than report. I respect that these sites can go on, are elaborate, but feel free to just isolate a specific aspect -- a feature of the operation, an aspect of the content, an overall idea of the piece -- and extend your thinking around it. It'd be good to hear more of you, from you, here.
Thanks for the helpful layout of the blog - most facilitating.
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