Well, that's that.

As I said before in the beginning of my final project, creating a web-comic is hard. I should have stuck to my strengths which was writing over drawing. This is what makes me really impressed with Jason Frostick's Desert Journey project. What I found interesting was the fact that he and I walked away from our group project with different interpretations of the experienc. By focusing on the literary aspects over the visual he was able to achieve his goal of providing that interactive element our group project was striving for through a fairly simple yet brilliant format of a choose your own adventure novel via hyperlinks. In hindsight I wonder how our group project would have turned out if we had chosen that method over the text game engine? When I first saw the first draft of Jason's adventure tree scribbled over an entire 8x11 page I thought he was nuts to try and implement all of those pathways. What I didn't realize was that he had essentially finished the hardest part and therefore actually typing and setting the links from one choice branch to the next was easy (relatively speaking) because he knew exactly where he wanted each part of the narrative to go. I wonder what a hybrid of Jason's hyper-linking text approach and the implementation of actual images would yield? Either way it was a great story and I enjoyed exploring all of the possible routes his adventure had in store.

Final Project Idea

Well so far I know I'd like to do a webcomic for my final project but the problem is I'm not certain what I'll be writing for said comic? I'm tempted to actually make a webcomic rendition of my group's project and go a little beyond a simple linear reading of the project's intended script. Basically I was wondering how feasible it would be for me to draft a "choose your own adventure" format using what would typically be the 'next', 'previous', and 'latest' page links. I'd have to limit some of the options from the original text but certain elements I think would be easily translatable. I figure I'll have a simple linear story arch as a back-up just in case figuring out the technical stuff becomes overly complex. But ideally I'd like to present some of the fun choices in the webcomic that my group intended from the text-game we attempted. Either way it ought to be interesting (I hope).

Response to: Words Under My Skin

I found this group project compelling because of the irony of having the anatomic metaphors loosely attached to their corresponding poems while the figure in the graphic is completely detached from his own skin. It seems to almost say that once someone has shed their outer shell they leave themselves immediately vulnerable and open to the world's judgement. I like how this piece portrays an expression of blatant honesty in spite of the potential dangers such honesty may incur. One minor issue I had was the difficulty in reading some of the poems due to a lack of stark contrast between the text and the background images. But I do like the fact that it is also a logistically simple yet eloquently assembled piece that reflects strongly the artists' intent. Overall I would consider this a well thought out project in that it evokes a substantial amount of reflection from its audience.

Remix Project Response

The remix project that stood out the most to me among the class submissions was Owen Ito's re-dub/sub of a 1930's Christmas Carol. Part of the appeal was how it shared a 'lost-in-translation' theme with my own remix project. I always enjoy how a simple shift in language can have such a dramatic impact on the context of any piece. To communicate eloquently and articulate complex ideas and feelings in one language is fascinating enough but to do so across multiple languages is nothing short of brilliant. I appreciated the irony of how Owen changed the audible context of the original piece through the written form of its original language. By simply converting what was once heard to something that is now read opens an infinite number new directions to be explored/exploited.

It brings into the focus the age-old question of what is truly original in art and literature anymore? When someone calls something new is it truly new and original or a remix of something that was done before? If the answer is the latter then every new work of art or literature is in reality a remix of something from the past. But that brings another question to light. Was there one piece that was the absolute and truly original form from which all subsequent remixes were derived? Or was there a core set of THE original ideas (i.e. multiple originals) from which multiples of remixes spawned from? Either way this is a philosophical question that may never be answered.

Remix Project Idea

For my Remix Project I decided to draft a new poem and then modify it through translation. The poem itself would be simply one stanza, two lines, and four words;

This means
absolutely nothing.

I am planning to translate it through several languages and show each translation from the orignial text as an evolutionary stage of the final product's development. The languages I plan to translate it through are all of the languages I was exposed to growing up in the order I first learned them. This means I'd be translating it from English to Korean, Korean to German, German to Spanish, Spanish to Japanese, and finally from Japanese back to English. I thought it would be fairly interesting to see what the final translation would be especially with the irony of the original text.

I'm doing this also as an expression of my experience as a bi-racial army brat growing up in a foreign land (in so many ways). My father is a boricua (New York born Puerto Rican) and my mother is from a small town outside of Seoul, South Korea (the name of which I probably couldn't pronounce even if I knew it). Shortly after I was born my family moved to Germany where my father was stationed with his Army Reserve unit and lived there for over 15 years. Well that's pretty much the gist of my Remix Project so let's see what happens.

Know Your Rights (Exercise 2)

The video and text posted on my webpage were obtained from the Internet Archive under a Public Domain copyright. The image was also obtained under a Public Domain copyright from Creative Commons. Public Domain as I understand it is a virtually unrestricted use of the published material provided proper citation and credit of a work's origin is listed. I am uncertain whether or not the citation I have on my website is adequate but hopefully it will provide a better legal argument in court than no citation at all.

On the works of Donna Leishman

When I first viewed Donna Leishman's interactive graphic Deviant: The Possession of Christian Shaw I was immediately disoriented. My confusion was likely Leishman's intent based on what I read of the project's description. Leishman's interactive graphic was based on the historical account of Christian Shaw, a little girl in 1695 who was suppossedly possessed by a demon in the small town of Paisley, England. Altough contemporary historians cite credible evidence that Chritsian's "possession" was likely a clever ploy for attention it was convincing enough to have seven members of her community tried and executed as witches.

At first I didn't believe Leishman's work counted as a online text because on my first few 'exlporations' of the piece I found very little text within the interactive graphic. After several more experiments with the interactive elements of Shaw's work I discovered a journal within the piece written by one of the story's key characters. As I played more and more with Leishman's project I began to understand not so much the story itself but the methodology behind the project. Because I was unfamiliar with the Christian Shaw story Leishman's project it forced me to research and read more about it. When I revisited the interactive graphic after conducting my research of the story I better understood the visual presentation.

What struck me as ironic about having to research the story is that I needed have it presented to me in a textual medium in order to understand a visual interpretation. Although it is said that picture can represent a thousand words it is words that give us context. This interactive graphic lead me to think of text as a grounding point for interpretting complex visual images. To me every movie, animated film, or even wordless comic panels all begin with textual framework that is built upon. That is what I believed made the compelling images and scenes of current films like The Lord of the Rings series becuase the computer animators were using a textual source to formulate the images in their minds' eye. Therefore I don't believe the written word will ever go away in spite of the latest evolutions in visual technology.

Text enables humans to construct complex visual images into a comprehensive product therefore a visual medium without a strong textual base is lacking no matter how elaborate the details. This is what I believe Leishman's work revealed to me because the strength of the images invoked a curiousity that lead me back to the story's origins, a textual medium.