Timeline Project: An objective instance (prototype)

Timelines intrigue me. Their seemingly straightforward linearity, the historic events notched along the line—no more grandiose than the event next to it—and the trust we put into their accuracy appears so factual that they often appear (to me) to be everything but accurate. Hints of stories, a global and timeless network of connections, wishes disguised as events, a childlike hopeful progression of knowledge and humility—all of these possibilities come to mind. My goal for this project was twofold: I wanted to play with the idea of history as a network—an endless and dynamic set of loops—that forever influence the present and even change the past, and I wanted to explore historic events as instances in time. This timeline prototype (hopefully) explores the concept that history is not dead on a stick and it cannot be distilled into tight little packages (such as WWII).

But, like all history, this prototype is grossly incomplete, objective, and experiencing some design flaws (namely screen size). My dream is to expand the timeline project into an interactive, dynamic, user generated, history-mapping tool that links events both forwards and backwards. I want it to be increasingly comprehensive, intriguing, full of questions, and beautiful.

As you click around the events you may find instances quite familiar to you, you may feel like you’re playing Jeopardy!, you may disagree with some of links, or you may find yourself doing a lot of googling. In any event, I hope you learn something or begin to push your own knowledge to create loops I have yet to know.

Thanks.

*And a very special thanks to Katie Lynch for providing the Flash coding that makes the entire project worthwhile, and for being a patient Flash consultant and friend in the process.  

 

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