Journey Project: Critique Response

One of the most intriguing things I found in looking comparatively at the class's interpretations of the Journey project was the way in which certain students tried to create a visual landscape that the viewer was engaged with and moved through, while others went for a more intellectually focused journey that was linked by thoughts.

My conception of the journey project was very much centered around a physical journey that viewers could follow through virtually. This was much more pronounced in the "real" side of my journey as opposed to the "imagined" journey, but the use of arrows and directional symbols on almost every page of the project were a reflection of my visualization of actually traveling through this digital space. Viewers were obviously not treading the real path I took when gathering photos for the project, but I tried to provide a wide, encompassing view of what would actually be see in each step of the journey. The act of clicking on icons in order to reach the next page is not the same as actually walking through an environment, but the movement of clicking the mouse in order to be presented with a new landscape was intended to mimic the act of travel (as much as that can be conveyed through a computer screen).

I had not concieved of the project in this way, but Stephanie's page was a good example of moving through a space based on thought processes. The locations she presented were physical places that did require travel to reach, but the connection between them was more of a mental connection rather than geographical proximity. To a certain degree, this is the approach I took for my imagined journey - going from one place or image to another based soley on trains of thought. Though I did not verbally state it on the page, my imagined journey was related to the journey you go through when you open a book and engaged with a written process. You do not physically leave the space you exist in, but your mind is able to jump from one environment to another because of mental processes and associations.

One of the other major disctinctions I saw in the way this project was approached was the kind of links students provided in order to guide users through a page and onto new pages. Certain projects, including my own, were based on visual links that required some background knowledge of common symbols and associations in order to understand the kind of movement that they would take you through. The other approach used by most of the class was a text based one that either explicitly stated where you were going, or provided a hint. Both methods could produce similar effects in how the pages were interacted with, but they again reflected a difference between a physical journey and a mental journey. Because I was looking to recreate the experience of physically moving through a space, I used mostly icons that were familiar on road signs or symbols such as footsteps that are easily recognizable for determining how to move. This was a reflection of the idea that when walking, you are generally not provided with a narrator explaining the places you are going - there are common symbols and objects that people will recognize and make their own associations with. As much as the project was my own journey and structed so that visitors will follow the links I have provided them with, I wanted users to be able to interpret how this journey would feel and be experienced by themselves as individual without any written guideance for how it should be viewed.