I went from the Bubbling Springs of Mono Lake to the California Correctional Women’s Facility in the space of 20 minutes. I traveled from peace and beauty, to fear and ugliness and from preservation to destruction. If you were to ask me which site I prefer, I’m not sure I could answer. The contrasts – site design, subject matter, spokespeople –are too disparate.
While any site advocating conservation carries a direct/implicit threat – that of destruction, loss or extinction – the focus is on beauty and the natural world. The structure of Saving the Sierra is simplistic and non-threatening – comfort food in a digital format. Yet the message of sustainability is strong and focused.
Public Secrets has a very different feel. The colors, grunge background, and harsh sound effects are designed to unsettle. The unconventional, now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t navigation fosters uncertainty. The treemap visualization alters viewers’ sense of positive and negative space. The Vector Journal Editorial staff writes:
The very design of the project — its algorithmic structure — calls our attention to shifting borders between inside and outside, incarceration and freedom, oppression and resistance, despair and hope. Throughout your navigation of the piece, the fine lines demarcating such binaries will morph, shift, and reconfigure, calling any easy assumptions about ‘us’ and ‘them’ into question.
Public Secrets is – pardon the banality – uncomfortable. The messages are uncomfortable: Mothers missing their children, wives who attacked abusive husbands, women whose crimes are punished more harshly than their male counterparts. The messages of injustice in the justice system, of brutality in a “corrections” facility uncover what we already know, but choose not to acknowledge.
Your observation of the “digestibility” factor within these various community projects is a very interesting one. I wonder which delivery style is more effective: allow the viewers to come to their own conclusions about the material, provide a well designed form of unsettling material to get the reader in an uncomfortable place, or straight up slap them in the face with uneasy material.
You hit the nail on the head with your statement about Public Secrets being uncomfortable. And I think it’s designed to be that way. The use of stark colors and separation is designed to discomfit viewers, especially in light of the fact that most of the projects we view in this class are highly visual. For the type of content that this project is presenting, I think the form fits. There’s no where to escape to when presented with uncomfortable information.
The acknowledgment of the discomfort induced by the messages of “Public Secrets” and the unveiling of injustices in the justice system further emphasizes the power of design in conveying not just information but a visceral experience. Your comment successfully encapsulates the emotional impact intended by the creators. Thanks for sharing!