This post is also available in: Español (Spanish)
This multimedia work uses a set of child-like drawings, links to gorgeously spooky artwork, zooming user interface, parallax scrolling with layers of artistic imagery, and a combination of static and scheduled lines of poetry to craft a richly immersive narrative experience. In his interview with Fabio De Vivo, Campbell discusses his creative process and goals when producing works for digital media, comparing it “to scrapbooking, with snippets of graphics, code, writing and sound all brought into the same place and blended/edited together to create a work which transcends (hopefully) any particular single component.”
And it does. The vibrant eye-catching canvas invites exploration and its interface is simple enough to keep readers from getting lost but with just enough learning curve to become drawn in. Sometimes a little complexity in the interface can produce deeper immersion, once the reader has internalized its mechanisms.
For example, there are scheduled lines of poetry displayed when the pointer is passed over certain hidden trigger points in the image. It doesn’t take long for readers to realize that they should explore the surface with the pointer, but also to pay attention when the texts start to appear because they disappear rather quickly and cannot be re-activated. I recommend looking at the images and reading the static texts before moving the pointer in order to get your bearings and have a sense of the whole onto which you then can add layers of meaning.
This work offers and withholds information through visual, poetic, and time-based techniques to make you want to read it again and again to find closure on this tantalizing story.
Featured in Dreaming Methods.
