Week 6: Joel Arellano

Storytelling and content aside, I found the form of the Localore site intriguing by the way the navigability alone enhanced my experience with each project. Jenkins, et al describe this as a “total engagement experience” (137), where storytellers can expand on “fictional worlds, to construct backstory, or explore alternative points of view, all in the service of enhancing the core narrative – the mothership – and ultimately intensifying audience engagement” (138). Localore’s dynamic image of the US adjusting to isolate and focus on a particular region, and allowing users to drill down from national to regional, local, and even personal levels  – exploring Austin block by block, or Minneapolis through the intensely personal views and rationales of high schoolers – are compelling means to transport an audience.

Too often, online experiences seem to take place on a single plane, which is efficient for quick communication, but limiting to users’ ability to go on a journey. Mediating audience experience by positioning hierarchical layers between the landing page and the ultimate content of a site not only builds context, but it isolates and presents the content in a controlled environment free from the noise of the last page visited and other ambient distractions. The journey down to a local level also provides a felt perception of being transported, which in Localore made me feel like I was being granted special access to the resources and stories, and so the content delayed feels more valuable to the consumer. Even without layered navigation, Bear 71 takes audiences on a journey by presenting a hyper-localized view of a single bear with a narrative arc, which is both foreign to our general perception of bears as an undifferentiated mass not usually encountered, and familiar, as in a fantastic story. This foreign/familiar juxtaposition has the same effect as the global/local tension in Localore- both force users to bridge these points through a felt experience of transition. The stories move you, both by form and content, and I think that’s the key to their success as digital media.

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

4 comments to Week 6: Joel Arellano

  • epriebe@uoregon.edu

    You hit on a big conflict in creating online experiences when you said that many of them seem to take place on a single plane. So many online experiences are designed to be extremely user-friendly sometimes to the detriment to the content itself. I love the layering of the projects we study, particularly this week, that allow the user to create their own experience without having to be guided through a pre-determined process the whole time. To me, the layered experience allows the user to endow the projects with much more personal meaning.

  • dereky@uoregon.edu

    Joel,
    I like your use of the word Journey in your post. The pieces we looked at this week allowed us to go on different journeys with a variety of approaches to engage with the media presented. I often felt like I was playing a game when I opened a piece, because there was no guideline to follow. I was forced to choose my own pathway through a project like Localore. I can see this approach to digital multimedia being effective in the classroom.

  • hdemich2@uoregon.edu

    Derek,
    Do you think you will present these to your students?

  • Daniel Oxtav

    I truly appreciated the innovative approach of the Localore site in shaping a “total engagement experience.” The navigation structure, allowing users to explore from a national level down to regional, local, and even personal perspectives, added a unique and immersive quality to the storytelling. <a href="https://ittelkom-pwt.ac.id"Thanks for sharing

Leave a Reply

You can use these HTML tags

<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>