Entry by llay008
Aim
The aim of this project is to create a website based around one of Emily Dickenson poems, using the multimedia available today.
It did not make sense to create my website for someone familiar with poetry, because I am not familiar with it myself. Keeping this in mind, I have aimed the website at someone of my generation or with a similar understanding of poetry. Most people living now are familiar with technology and used to being surrounded by visual stimuli in a way that was not even conceived of when Emily was alive. As a result, instead of solely printing the text on to the webpage, which is not very interesting and defeats the purpose of putting it on the net, I am trying to create the poem dynamically, creating a 'movie' of the poem using images and words. By using words I hoping to create a verson that will still be interesting but also contain some ambiguity - which is one of the fascinating aspects of poetry.
Emily's poetry is unusual in that she provided multiple versions. I feel this is important to keep. I have not yet, but hope to, implement this into the website by creating links to the alternative versions as they arrive in the poem. If this is not possible with the dynamic version then I will attempt using a static version.
I will also create several text versions of the text. One of the flaws of creating a 'movie' is that it is hard to see the poem in its entirety. For someone that enjoyed 'watching' the poem this gives them that option. Similarly I want to put another static version that contains all the alterations similar to what we were given in the lecture. On its own, this would be confusing but complementing the links it should provided a 'map' of all the combinations.
Challenges
Despite being a software engineering student I have no more experience creating a website than an English major. Hence there was a bit of a learning curve to overcome. I was not sure if I could learn html or how to program flash applictions in time or to the level which I desired. I overcame this by being resourceful and finding simple (and free) programs on the net which could help me.
This, and an incredibly busy week, mean that my website, particularly my poem, are still in the very early stages of development and I still have a lot of bugs to work out, especially with timing.