Digital Lanugage Arts

Final Project Statement             All the news we consume is controlled. News agencies and organizations decide what is worthy of making the news cycle and allow us to consume that information. We turn to the same news sources for our information – generally, ones that reflect our political beliefs and values. Consequently, we get stuck in an echo chamber. My final project is a dramatization of this experience.             In my project, I wanted to capture this experience, showing the audience that they do not have control over their surroundings and are passive recipients. A news article is randomly selected from a pre-curated list of news articles. The user enters a wormhole while a computer voice reads the article to the user. The wormhole changes colors as the sentiment of each color changes and the speed that the user enters the wormhole changes as well.             I made many design decisions as I was making my final project. First, I had to make a

While working on my final project this week, I spent time thinking about how much control the user should have over the experience. Ultimately, I decided the user shouldn't have any input or control over the experience because the experience is only given meaning if it is passive; it's indicative of the way we consume our news. We do not have a say in what news is reported to us. After making this decision, I experimented with a few concepts: 1) I considered allowing the user to input an article, allow them to choose from an assortment of articles, or random select an article to be read to the user. I ultimately decided to randomly select an article to be read to the user because it best matches the passive experience I want to create - as I described above. 2) The second consideration I had was giving the audience time to prepare, so the website would prompt the user to click a button to enter the experience. After trying this idea and asking people for feedback, I decided