The vector project I chose to analyze was The Synthetic Philosophy of the Glance by Eric S Faden. The name of the project refers to the way in which film and visual media portray railroads and trains throughout early cinema. The project is of a very simplistic design, and unfortunately I left the site wanting more content and interactivity. The entire project was comprised of 5 pages: a short essay by Timothy Corrigan, a 12 minute documentary linked from YouTube (which I assumed was made by the projects author but was never stated explicitly in the video) a “Behind the Scenes” page which briefly discussed the recreation of early cinematic shots in modern times, a DVD tab to buy the documentary on DVD, and a contact page.
The site opts for a white text on black background color scheme, which certainly is acceptable as the topic of the project is old film, but leaves the audience almost disengaged. This simplistic layout led me to feel that site was unfinished, unpolished, or simply dismissed by the author. With my limited html/css knowledge I could recreate this site. The site simply opens to the documentary and the movie proceeds to play. This of course allows the audience to engage the site right away, but it made me feel as though this video was being forced upon me, and that the this video was the only piece of content worth seeing on the site.
There was little to no interactivity on the site. Apart from clicking between the tabs, you could not interact with the website at all. This made it the website feel less like a Digital Humanities project, but more of a school project Faden made for his teacher. And even so, I would expect the content on a strictly web-based academic project to be far more extensive than a short documentary and another person’s essay.
Based on the editorial notes, the design choices in the site perplex me still. The editorial discusses that the topic is all about movement, and yet the site was completely stagnant. The topic is supposed to be about transformation and time through the conduit of the railroad, and yet this site makes it very unclear as to the subject of the project without watching the 12-minute documentary. I did not even know trains in cinema was an important part of the website until minute 6 of the documentary. The difficulty in understanding and interacting with a subject matter is a problem of design, and is the reason I do not think this project is a success.
Maybe I analyzed this project too early in its timeline. The editorial notes even say that they Faden will add additional resources to this site to fully flesh out this project. But as of now, the site lacks in both content and interactivity, and its publishing to the vector website demonstrates that both Faden and the Vector Journal believe that the site has matured enough to be a public spectacle, a point in which I disagree. It would be one thing if the site had too much content and not enough interface. It would have been another if the site had a flashy interface with very little content. But as the site lacks in both, it is curious to me as to why Vector Journal enjoyed this project so. Faden’s current project would be better submitted as a research documentary at a film festival rather than an interactive vector project.