‘A City on Wires’ is an interactive media artefact showing some of the ways in which electricity is incorporated into city living. It highlights the ability electricity has to connect events and people, therefore showing how people’s movement within the city is dependent on electricity. It invites the viewer to form their own opinion on how electricity connects them to the city as the piece of work is presented in a handmade manner.

Taking inspiration from Bryan Alexander who states that “establishing a personal sense is a powerful storytelling strategy” (2011, p. 41)  was key to bringing together our individual work and ideas into one collaborative piece. For example, agency in one’s life is enacted by walking in shoes, by ordering a coffee or by expressing one’s self in a journal. This is true to one’s agency in a city. Therefore, the notion of ‘personal sense’ recognises that we each have our own entanglements in the city and so, it was important to put this at the forefront of our work as it invites the viewer to bring their own entanglements to the work.

At first, the single page format using indesign was extremely challenging. Not knowing the full capabilities of the program and subsequently our individual capabilities of learning the program, made us unsure of what we could produce. Despite this, we knew that “every digital story can take advantage of the unique affordances of each digital platform it uses” (Alexander 2011, p. 43). We wanted the piece to be personal for each viewer therefore, we took advantage of the button function in indesign. By making things appear, we discovered that this would lead the viewer to anticipate what is to come therefore allowing them to entangle their own expectations and views into the work. Furthermore, I discovered through this process that the imagery and text were particularly important to the single page format. The text was used predominantly to guide the viewer whilst the imagery was used to tell the story. Therefore, contrast and similarity is important to guiding a viewer as they move around a page. This is something that I think worked well in the project. The ability of images to build upon each other to have new meanings allows for the viewer to engage further with the work. For example, the images of the paper tore when engaged with and subsequently revealed new pieces of content. This idea has the potential to be emulated into further work such as by physically moving an object to reveal more.

The piece of work was also influenced by research directly relating to the city. “There are so many electric wires on poles now, crisscrossing the dark, but one black wire connects me directly to” (Stokesbury 1990, p.76). This poem was included in the final work as it correlates with the wires which connect all sections of the work. This was fundamental for choosing which media modes to focus on in the work. The wires play an important role and so, sounds were tied to them. I learnt from this that the different modes of media need to be reflective of which parts must stand out in a piece of entangled media. Furthermore the notion that “compared to rural environments, multiple aspects of urban habitats may lead to increased vulnerabilities for maladaptive neurobiological functions” (Lambert et al. 2015, p118) was also important in shaping the types of media used. The work produced is digital but musn’t be overwhelming. It is challenging to choose media modes which are reflective of the topic as well as accessible. This led to dealing with how to instruct the viewer to move around the page. Whilst the aspects of personal journey was important to the piece, more instruction needed to be given. I think that this is an aspect of the work which didn’t work very well. Instruction was given to a certain degree however, having more structure would have allowed for more information to be given and so, the research could have had more of an impact on the work rather than leaving it entirely up to the viewer. Moving forward from this, a possible way to alter the work would be to make it more of a game in which more instruction is given and the viewer is able to learn a specific thing at each stage of the work.

As a group we often questioned what ways we could incorporate the functions of indesign into the the work to ensure that the final piece was presented in an entangled way. We also often questioned what elements of the city we wanted to focus on however we always came back to the idea of movement in various forms as this was a common factor in our previous work. In saying this, moving forward from this assignment, the topic of movement is an idea I am interested in. Being able to physically move within a space to engage with the work holds a lot of creative potential and so it is something I want to try out.

References:

Alexander, B (2011) “The Next Wave of Digital Storytelling Platforms.” The New Digital Storytelling: Creative Narratives with New Media. ABC-CLIO, LLC: 29–43.

Lambert, K.G, Nelson, R.J, Jovanovic, T & Cerdá, M 2015, ’Brains in the city: Neurobiological effects of urbanisation’, Neuroscience and Biobehavioural Reviews, vol. 58, pp. 107-122.

Stokesbury, L 1990, ‘City Lights’, The Kenyon Review, vol. 12, no. 1, pp. 75-77.