dear e.e.
<view
dear e.e.>
dear e.e., by Ingrid Ankerson and Lori Janis, is my favorite new media poem and a seminal example of an interactive piece that uses mouse movements to convey layers of meaning in the text. While the words of dear e.e. are meaningful, and the images are aesthetic, it is the reader’s interaction with the rollover effects that really punctuate the metaphor. To capture the pieces of the poem, much like capturing fragments of a dream, the reader must carefully navigate the mouse and attempt to steady the text long enough to be able to read it. The handwritten font of the text and the shaky, rapid movement of the sketch-like images add to the personal and dream-like state.
The metaphor here operates on two levels. The narrator could possibly be addressing a lover, who has come in and rearranged her life, as her furniture is rearranged in the dream; this would allude to the themes of e.e. cummings' poetry, as he can be interpreted to be speaking of a lover who disturbs his psyche somehow. Further, the poem is addressed to e.e. directly, which the reader can assume is e.e. cummings; this is strengthened, of course, by the lack of capitalization and flying punctuation—a direct commentary on cummings' style. In this case the metaphor is most strongly the frustrating attempt at grasping sense of a dream is representing the attempt to understand and make sense of cumming’s poetry. Perhaps, in all its beauty and language and lack of punctuation, it is better just appreciated.
Click here for an example
of a new media analysis, using terms developed by Cheryl Ball, composed
for a graduate course in new media at Utah State University (and before
I had any aesthetic sense of web design). <moving
dream>
