My Vectors project is called “Blood Sugar,” by Sharon Daniel & Erik Loyer, chronicling the stories of intravenous drug users through a visual-audio experience. There are sound-clips of interviews conducted with participants in an HIV-prevention and needle-exchange program, touching on heavy subjects like abuse, isolation, and incarceration.
The piece is often very symbolic. Its title is a reference to the street name of heroin, “sugar.” Its audio clips, shown as “waveform bodies” are visualized in a way to resemble syringes. The words that float around them are quotes or notes from the project lead Sharon Daniel, and touch on more general and societal commentary on the stories. It’s “outside” of the body, like a needle or drug before injection. However, as you zoom in, you enter the “cell” or “inside” of the body (and mind). Now, the floating words deal more with chemistry and drugs, internal thoughts, and physiological responses.
The project consists of different zoom layers. At its most wide, the “audio bodies” are lined up representing all of the subjects’ stories. Upon clicking on one of them, the screen fills with the shape, and can be interacted with (spun, stretched) the mouse. By zooming in further, words float around a sphere, representing the cell. The next level is inside the sphere, with phrasing floating around a pulsing, amorphous shape. At all layers except the most macro one, the quotes (“you just can’t stop until your ready”), motifs (“repetition”), and science (“[Methadone]”) constantly float around the screen.
While visually interesting, I can’t say that this project has intuitive interactive design. There are parts constantly in motion, and it’s easy to feel lost in the clumps of words and odd shapes that fill the screen. The words often clash in the foreground and background, making it difficult to read. Furthermore, without the index on the bottom bar, it would be nearly impossible to intuitively seek out a specific quote or theme. There is no clear organization in the visual interface, and it’s easy to miss out on details because they move around so quickly.
However, I understand the justifications behind the design choices. As stated in Daniel’s author statement, most of the visual aspects are representative of the stories they tell. She argues the project is “structured in terms of the social and biological construction of addiction at the boundary of the skin.” This idea is supported by her designer Loyer’s explanations that convey how the annotations are the “interviewee’s oscillations between topics located primarily outside of the skin (social) or inside the skin (biological).”
Therefore, the leaders of this project likely prioritized the symbolic experience of the stories, rather than focusing on each word. It works as a whole, rather than emphasize its parts–it’s united by its visual motif of the skin barrier, and complemented by the emotional audio clips. The project doesn’t aim to transcribe the subjects’ interviews for the sake of recording, finding, and referencing specific words, but rather to encourage exploration of the wealth of themes it touches upon in a holistic manner.