Daily Archives: October 12, 2025

student blogs

Feeling Like a Guest

Facade and Welcome Home

Facade

Being asked to choose a letter to pick a name and the somewhat mysterious music playing at the same time reminded me of the game Resident Evil when it first came out for PlayStation. There would be certain scenes when the character is in the save room and a certain music, piano, singing bowl chiming like there was a purpose to fulfill played. The same for when the conversation or argument was occurring behind the door with Trip and Grace. As we are brought closer to the door a few commands as tips are shown along the screen quickly once again creating the interaction but with a feeling of something eerie is happening were we then interact with Trip after once we are inside the apartment. I really paid attention to the background music as I entered after being invited by Trip, a loud harmonica, maybe accordion like annoyance fills the air while Grace is being rude and arguing loudly in the kitchen not allowing Trip to get a word in to comment, only half utters.

 As Diana is finally greeted by Grace the conversation seems forced, and fake showing the lack of compatibility. When it came to the responses to Graces decorating, any welcoming response about her abilities to decorate lessens the tension some before Grace could get angry or upset and gave Trip the opportunity to step in and further iterate her good sense of style and artistic vision. Grace was getting jealous though before that from the comments made by Diana on the Italy photo and it gave Trip a big head from all the compliments. It also felt weird, awkward when they thanked Diana for introducing them 10 years ago and some fo the words used to describe their relationship overtime were abrupt and not the adjectives I expected, or transparency found in a couples usually reply such as Pain. The argument between them started to heat up and then they raised questions to Diana about what a marriage or relationship should be and if couples should make each other better. Diana’s responses were taken offensively it seemed or not the answers either Grace or Trip wanted to hear. They both wanted to be right, and Diana was only there to justify each of their positions in the marriage and how they felt between each other. Anxiety kind of also got higher in what I as feeling even though I was just watching and not really there observing through the YouTube social media link. This becomes a entirely new way of interaction.

Welcome Home

If there could be any two contrasting Elit content it would be Welcome Home and Façade. Right away the color palette makes you feel warm, welcomed and wanting to know what’s going on here, let me further explore. The experienced of joy and “home” is really emphasized with all the content that was found and restored from this children’s TV program in 1969, created to have a treasure trove of happiness at the click of a mouse. The Playfellow Exhibition and “It’s for You” interactive phone really sparked some ideas but also shows how challenging it would be for someone from most recent generations to just sit there and listen to the recordings on a rotary phone, not being able to type or text, or respond in any way to justify their being. I wanted to experience more of the recordings and attempted to click on the active hypertext link to their merchandise page but there was nothing there to go to, only greeted with the acknowledgment that I went too far out of the page. I was impressed though when I clicked on The Neighborhood button and all the different residents who resided there and the description each had.  The colors again made me feel welcomed unlike the theme of interacting with Façade and the tension, anxiety that was always present. The transcripts were very long and fun to read even the extensive conversation of dialogue involved in each catchphrase.

I think out of all the characters I can relate to Wally, since I too am an artist who enjoys expressing and connecting with others through painting and lending a helping hand with similar mannerisms, characteristics mentioned in his description being a neighbor who is “soft spoken, patient, kind, and observant, regardless of his surrounding circumstances concerning his over-the-top neighbors.” It seems he is someone who always tries to make the best out of his situation and keep a smile on his face for not only himself, but also for his neighbors to feel welcomed and joyful. We can learn a lot from these characters and the moods, examples they portray that we can try to display in and around our own surroundings.  Neighbors should be anyone who we have the pleasure of interacting with, not just a person or persons who lives next or across the street from us that we feel obligatory to interact with. Welcome Home is a great interactive restoration of a children’s tv show that I am sure touched a lot of hearts when it was aired and also influenced happier times, interaction with others as they related to each character.

student blogs

Welcome Home & Facade

Welcome Home might be my favorite piece of e-lit we’ve walked through. I was a little confused at first when going through the website. When I came across the “About Us” section I didn’t quite understand what they meant by “The Welcome Home Restoration Project is a team of anonymous individuals dedicated to compiling, restoring, and archiving what few remnants of Welcome Home have been uncovered.” because I had never heard of Welcome Home. I did a little bit more perusing through the website and saw that it was a puppet show. I then had done a quick Google search and got a little bit more detail. I then dove deeper on the restoration website and looked through all of the characters and how fun! I love that they included sound bites but my absolute favorite part of the website was the “discoveries” tab.

I’m not sure what it is but I love seeing stuff like that like the old Valentine’s Day cards, cereal boxes, cookbooks, etc.. I would love to know why the show was abruptly pulled from the air. One moment that made me feel eerie was when I read the quote “Slowly but surely, we have begun to uncover media that confirms Welcome Home was once on the air!”. In today’s world we have proof of things that existed with physical artifacts sure but digitally as well. When this show was on air, they didn’t have a website or the internet to archive the show/episodes, products or merchandise. The creators of this have probably had to search high and low and dedicate so much time to uncovering these pieces of media and merchandise to even prove the existence of the show. I absolutely adored my experience looking through this website but it also somehow gave me a slightly unsettling feeling (which I weirdly still enjoy).

I did have trouble accessing Facade but I did watch some videos that were sent to us. I found the second one most helpful since the user spoke to the audience. The first link I watched was still entertaining but I really liked watching him play through and talks us through it. For some reason, most pieces of elit we walked through have given me an uneasy feeling I’m not sure why. Facade seems like iconic piece because of the way users are able to interact with it. The piece obviously has some structure like the Grace and Trip bringing up the paintings from Italy, the wine/bar, etc.. But it is so fascinating to see that Grace and Trip interact with whatever the user says. The last video was cool because the user interacted with the space and seemed to have a lot of knowledge of the game based on the text he was putting in. I thought each of these videos brought something new to the experience which was very cool because it shows how many different ways you can approach it.