i've been thinking a lot lately about interactivity with type or text [like this is a new thought!]—partly because i'm taking a typography class in which we're working with expressive typography, but also partly because i'm interested in seeing what can be done with interactivity.
i came across
the book of sand recently, though it's not a recent site, & it got the wheels turning again. the site is an interactive telling of
the book of sand by jorge luis borges. as reader, you control the speed of the story—not with your reading speed, but with the placement of sand at the bottom of the page. as the words fly in from right to left [giving the reader the impression of reading naturally, from left to right], they glide over the peaks of the sand, rising and falling with them. if the reader places too much sand on the left, the text stops moving until the slope has been re-established.
my first reaction to this was one of wonder:
how does it work? what happens if i click here? can i get it to go backwards? [the answer to that last is, sadly, no.] after a short while of playing with the sand, i began to lose interest, & bookmarked the site for later use.
what never once got through to me was the actual story being told.
even now, writing this, i am ashamed to say i have no idea what
the book of sand is about, having never read it before. while this method of telling the story may enhance the reader's experience, & may be related to the text of the story, it ultimately serves as a distraction
from the story rather than an enhancement of it.
i'm not dismayed. i think there is still a great deal of potential for a reading experience that enhances the text rather than distracts from it. but this level of interactivity—turning the story itself into a kind of game, a backdrop for a more prominent & more important user experience—is not the way to go.
[but it was fun.]
