Examples of what not to do
][ad][dressed in a Skin C.ode repeatedly hung-up on my computer all weekend. As this it the first piece that I have had problems with, I'm guessing it has something to do with the way it was constructed or written. That being said, the little that I was able to see before Explorer stopped responding had too much code looking stuff for my taste. I disliked dealing with code in 1980 when I had a vic-20 and that hasn’t changed in 26 years. Like other forms of art, it’s not my bag so I’m tempted to skip trying to make some sense of this work on another machine.
I thought V: Vniverse was the most interesting of these three pieces. The star chart reminded me of Myst. At first I randomly selected a star but then I started entering the numbers and reading it in order. I noticed that some of the pages/paragraphs/sections could be read with the title and/or number included which gave an added dimension to the text. Other times, one or the other or both needed to be skipped because they made the sentence nonsensical. I didn’t recognize the stars (not that I have much knowledge about astronomy!) or the “constellations” that appeared when a star was selected. Nor was I able to notice any type of image that had anything to do with the written part. If I haven’t explored/read some of the essays that are linked to this piece, I’m not sure I would have grasped the link between the nomads reading the stars and my reading text by selecting a star. This one needs to be added to my places to explore page!
Errand was a rather annoying piece to me. The soundtrack was short and repetitious. The background images made the text hard to read. Thankfully, it was very short! Or maybe I intentionally overlooked some links that would have made it longer. The links I did follow looped back into each other quickly so getting lost wasn’t an issue. The text - both as objects and as words with meaning - and the images appeared to be working together - possibly there is a pseudo-subliminal eco-message in the piece. But the basic design flaws (intentional?) I noticed negated any interest I had in going through it more than twice - once in order and once using the links. Maybe it would be less annoying with the sound turned off.
posted by Anonymous @ 12:06 AM
1 Comments:
These are thoughtful responses to all three readings--even to Mez's work, which you weren't really able to view. (I should be taking note of all the technical problems students are having with these pieces and do bug reports to the authors, but I'm just not that charitable.)
It's good that you notice how useful the supporting materials accompanying these pieces can be to a critical (or even just an appreciative) reading. One of the values of web-based hypertext is that it's easy to add resources to a site, essentially compiling a "critical edition" of an electronic document by linking commentaries, critical pieces, and contextual materials to it, as Strickland does with V:niverse. Your exploratory technique seemed to yield compelling results, but it is interesting to go back and read a work along the lines suggested by its author in whatever users-manual-like instructions he or she provides. At times, I like my own way of reading better. . .
It's been really interesting to get so many different responses to Errand, a piece I've always found philosophically interesting but technically problematic. Both authors are quite adept at web design, so I almost have to read the design choices as "intentional" to some degree, but I still can't completely integrate them into a nuanced reading. One approach would be to argue that the animation, in refusing to be strictly "life-like" and mimetic, is pointing to the status of the images as semiotic signs rather than "real" things. The piece seems to be occupied with transitions--perhaps the transition between "reference" (thing in the world) to linguistic "sign" (fusion of image and concept) is one of these. Language is always to some extent "artificial" insofar as it's a formal, more or less fixed means of referring to a constantly fluctuating world. But I would need to extend this analysis and ground it more in particular aspects of Errand. As I think I mentioned in class, my little boy definitely prefers it with the sound off.
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