Critique Response: Journey Project

Journey Project Start (viewed best in Safari)

I wanted to create a journey project that kind of got the viewers lost within the site in a journey, so that they may have to re-experience certain pages, like Nobodyhere.com or Jodi.org does. I created that journey with the underwater path--the foot that wanted to go on an adventure. I liked the fact that I would be holding my audience captive in a way, so that it wasn't just a linear journey to the end, and then they were done with it. I'm glad that the class understood what I was trying to do with that, and that it was an effective piece in that way.

One suggestion that I was given was to clarify some of the pages, where you weren't sure where you could click. So, in some pages, like the surfing girls and the baseball player, I added more photoshop graphics that popped up on rollover, to show the different areas one could click on, and that way you had a bit of an idea of where you had been if you were still travelling the circutious loop of the pages. I also tried to unify the pages and images better by giving each page a background, derived from a predominant color in the image.

As for the second journey, the foot that stays at home, I wanted to make this a more direct route. There is a parallel in that you are exploring something (a computer or under water), but I wanted the second journey to differ in that it is more narrative, I address the viewer through text and tell them where to click many times. The computer journey is more literal--I used real images of the insides of a macbook pro, whereas for the underwater journey I took images that were fanciful underwater photography. To reflect the more literal nature of the computer journey, I made the path more straight and assigned myself the role of narrator through the internet.

I really enjoyed this project, and I had pretty high standards for myself when creating the journey project. I wanted it to be entirely engaging to the viewer, something they interacted with and explored not only through seeing the elements and guessing where to click, but with audio as well. I even tried to think of witty titles for each page. Mostly, I wanted to create a website and art piece that will stand on its own outside the context of this class, so that I can take it to my friends or family or strangers, and they can simply enjoy the experience of the journey, without needing to know I created it for a class.