During the summative action of putting written components together, I figured out the necessity to clarify about the latest iteration, as well as the visual essay, in a succinct and concise manner.
The latest iteration evolved from the second latest one, which was a quick whip-up of something within tight time constraint (shown underneath this paragraph) upon the idea of combining a detritus of contents with my newly learned abilities to manipulate and orchestrate user interactions.
One feedback that stands out is the chaos presented in the UX, and a lack of focus on a consistent focal point. I thus decide to carry this out into the latest iteration. The theme I have incorporate when gathering contents for the page, was therefore anything that showcase, envision, imagine or campaign for a prosperous, vital, eudaimonic good life.
One route I took was keyword searches across multiple platforms, starting from #happy, #goodlife, #joy, #bless etc, scavenge samples of typical contents I come across, and expand outwards by looking into associating contents, usually more specific (e.g. #avocadotoasts, #morningyoga etc.), to sketch the immediate images of good life the internet has to offer.
It is also shown that the vision towards a good life is highly varied and subjective. This lack of focus and agreement however presents exploitable loopholes for capitalism––packaging products as the sought-after good life for profit––and thanks to resources at their disposal, these fabricated messages about good life usually enjoy much stronger circulability and thus much longer lifetime. I would like to expose this aspect in the upcoming iteration, in a tone that is quiet, nuanced and not didactic.
While browsing these fragments I encountered a lot reporting over conflicts and sufferings currently plaguing the world, while the average influencer Instagrammed their morning routine. Conflict itself is not about good life, the attention and discourse around them, however, is. I therefore decide to incorporate them into contents reflecting the quest towards a good life. In the visual essay, I do not want to distract the viewers with strong and stark imagery, I therefore embedded them in the backgrounds, with recognisable visual context flickering through. Moreover, footages of conflicts and suffering, with some key contexts removed, are juxtaposed with those of celebrations and high entertainment, as a poignant reminder of the bigger picture as the dark backdrop of these ‘happy hours’.
I have also decided to incorporate some excerpts from timeless classics searching for a good life––Plato’s Republic, Voltaire’s Candide, Kenji Miyazawa’s poems. In my latest iteration, I composed the webpage in hope to present the viewers ALL of these visions/campaigns/ideals of a good life, juxtaposing one next to the other.
Visual contents are linked to the texts, which could be revealed by clicking corresponding texts. This is to enhance the experience with more impactful contents that illustrate different ideas of a good life. Users are also able to interact with the layout of still images. I hope videos can also be subjected to the same interaction, but have not yet figured out the technical solution.
The richness of contents and interaction aim to create a false sense of abundance and liberty to the users: in order to reveal or conceal contents to their liking, one has to consume all contents of the page; when they wish to reach certain content, undesired contents are hard to avoid when they tried to move over the cursor. Moreover, the sheer size of files hosted on the page collectively can quickly wear out the browser, crashing it, or even the device.
The visual essay is closely corresponded with the latest iteration, as it strongly reflects my overarching position of GCD practice towards eudaimonia—a good life. As a un-interactable time-based visual media, it itself is an allegorical narration of this particular iteration, in a rich poetic rhetoric.