Week 8 Adam King

Ahhh, finally some categorical reference points! La Buena Vida’s ability to filter through responses by selecting which questions were answered is a tool that could benefit so many of the projects we’ve looked at this semester. Imagine if David Lynch’s Storytellers Project had used some sort of itemized talking points to unite different stories? It could have completely altered the story arc of that project and potentially created an interesting set of defining factors of the human experience. I also love how La Buena Vida allows you to scan through each interview by jumping to the relevant talking points. Now if they could only add English subtitles to more of the videos…

Organization of the database seems like a tool that is becoming more essential every day. If we think of something as general as Youtube where 100 hours of video are uploaded every minute, how would that site survive without tags or titles? Yet many of these sites we looked at are lacking any feature of scannable unity, and thus they turn into something more akin to a dusty shoebox full of old photos than an actual archive which can be interacted with. If you look at the intro page to the Post Secret Archives, you’ll notice that it states it has no affiliation with the actual Post Secret site. In other words, someone other than the creator realized that the site was lacking organization. So as much as I love the notion of Post Secret and the rotational nature of their presentation, the non-affiliated Archives site is much more interesting to peruse and interact with. This leads to the notion that not only is it beneficial to have some degree of curation occur on your site or project, but that if you don’t do it somebody else will. And that somebody else will be crafting a storyline out of your work with no say from you, and diminish the influence of your original project. It’s not enough to just be a great collector – you need to find the story behind the info rather then hope the story presents itself. Ideally a solid project will be able to give the user the sensation that the course of navigation is at their control, but at the same time have a direct story line that they are able to access.