Ask Me About The Moon, by John David Zuern and The Vine & the Fish by Leise Hook
Ask Me About the Moon by John David Zuern felt like stepping into someone’s digital dream sequence. It was quiet, slow, and full of small discoveries. The navigation seemed intentionally delicate: I clicked through scattered words that appeared almost by chance, as if the story wanted to test my patience. I had to pay attention to the words as the overlapped.
Some pages seemed to open fragments of soft text against shifting backgrounds, while other clicks would lead to silence, asking me to notice what wasn’t being said (I think). At one point, I followed a glowing moon icon, only to find it brought me back to where I started, I guess this was supposed to show me that not every path lead to forward movement?!
The Vine & the Fish by Leise Hook felt more alive and awake. Navigation was more of an actually story to me, I could follow a path. As I slid and hovered over and pull through its digital pages I could see something unfolding, an actual story. The vine stretched across the screen, curling around snippets of text that told small stories. It gave the impression of a hidden system, seemingly organic, but intentional. There was a rhythm to it, like breathing or swimming.
The Vine & the Fish for me was timed perfectly. There’s a contractor in my neighborhood causing a lot of waves (like an invasive vine) in building across the street from my house. He’s removing a ton of trees to build an oversize McMansion on the lake we all moved into my neighborhood to be a part of. Being a part of this story and loosing myself in the vines was both ironic and meditative as I was going through something somewhat similar in my personal life.
I loved how both these stories slowed me down. That my current personal life is so overly busy (@12-14 hour days) and both these gave me a chance to just stop and breath and loose myself to the stories as they unfolded. Both remind me that digital literature isn’t about technology showing off (no “MTV style’ fast moving video’s etc.); it’s about using it to create emotion, reflection, and connection in unexpected ways.
