Ali Murray's Project Page

a collection of projects for digital nonfiction, spring '16

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For this next project, I’m making an archive of stories about Rhode Island lighthouses, connected to their rich histories, my grandfather’s love of lighthouses, and my own personal experiences with them. It’s been very fun traveling to find them (I love lighthouses a lot), and my next step is visiting the Rhode Island Historical Society to get more archival info. I emailed them last Wednesday to inquire, but no response thus far (the website does say it can take up to two weeks), so I’m just going to jump in headfirst and go there tomorrow to ask in person. 

I’m hoping that going there tomorrow will be even more inspiring, but right now, medium-wise, I’m thinking about making a javascript website that will generate the stories one line at a time, making a general lighthouse shape with the words. 

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Albums are only allowed to have ten images, so here are the other two! Also, links to the differing pages (generally in order, as seen on this page, starting with these two) are below.

Lyman Hall

Van Wickle Gates 1

Swearer Bench

Van Wickle Gates 2

John Carter Brown Library

Goddard Gate

University Hall

Pembroke Seal

Keeney Quad

Wriston Quad

Simmons Statue of Marcus Aurelius

Main Green Obelisk

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And the Brown Translation Project is complete!

I did have fun with it, but this part feels a little unfulfilling--I don’t get to witness people’s reactions or anything. I also wish I could have made more, but I ran out of Latin!

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And an example of what the site looks like! I’m developing one of these for each piece of Latin, but I haven’t found enough for my satisfaction yet. 

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Collecting Latin for my next project, in which I will come up with fake translations and post QR codes near the Latin on campus to a website explaining them.  

The only thing I’m not sure about now is posting near war monuments--I don’t want to be disrespectful, so I’m going to keep looking for quotes that are in more appropriate places.

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There it is! The “final” version (under sonnetsfinal.py). I’m pretty happy with it. I ended up playing with some interesting ideas about romance and comfort--this is the piece that has felt the most like writing to me of everything I’ve done so far in this class.

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This is where I’m at right now. 6/14 lines--so I should definitely be good by tonight, and I can use tomorrow to polish.

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Contribute to digitalnonfiction development by creating an account on GitHub.

Here’s the first draft of my Choose Your Own Adventure project. 

This file contains two working mechanisms for my project, with an example line for each. In the first line, each word of a certain syllable number is replaced by the word entered by the user; in the second, only one is. As I move forward in this process, each "Enter a word for the X line" prompt will be replaced by an actual quiz-like prompt, as in "What is your favorite color?" The sonnet lines that the words are placed into will also be customized--right now the Shakespeare is a placeholder, but I will likely use at least some Shakespeare in the next iteration as well.

N.B.: If you don't have an application on your computer that can run Python (Brackets won't do it right), you can download this file, drag this file to your desktop, open Terminal, type "cd desktop," hit enter, type "python sonnets.py", and hit enter again to run it.

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Digital Movement Debrief

The clicking is boring. No clicking.

Use a pedometer instead

Consider making an app as a final project. (I’m going to write more about this later.)

Icons are impersonal and it’s not obvious that they’re links.

Give a way to save the count.

Think of it as a map, uncovering little but interesting aspects each time.

Raise the stakes so people have interest in the project.

More writing!

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Choose Your Own Adventure Brainstorm

I want to use the personality quiz archetype to generate a “custom sonnet” for the user based on their word entries given after certain prompts. I was inspired by Raymond Queneau’s A Hundred Thousand Billion Poems, although at this point they’re totally different projects. I’m going to use Python, which I have very little experience with, but I was advised that that would be the best option. 

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It’s “done”! Or at least, iteration #2 is. I’m going to put some spoiler-y information about the project under the readmore.

Overall, it turned out all right. Parts could be prettier or more interesting, but given that this was my first time using Javascript, I’m pretty satisfied. I ended up clocking it in at around 18 hours, but I think that can reasonably be adjusted to 14 with the time I spent smashing my face against my keyboard in frustration subtracted.

The project is intentionally unplayable. I added some interactive storytelling moments to make the relentless clicking more interesting, although still by no means survivable. The reader can access the full project by viewing the page source or otherwise manipulating it. Besides that, there are no shortcuts. My workshop group kind of hated that, but they understood it more when I brought up this point: I want the project to feel like work because it’s very personal. The highest numbers are things that I would not be willing to share for just a few clicks. There’s a currency involved, where the clicker must need to invest time and effort to get to know me. GASP! Just like a real relationship. My metaphors are so deft. I also wanted to play around with ideas of distance (something that fascinates me) and time (something I’m afraid of). It was fun. I played a lot, and I think that’s definitely a good thing.

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Thank goodness. Now I can do more tweaks.

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MAYDAY MAYDAY

(Not really, but my JavaScript is totally broken. I don’t doubt that I’ll be able to fix it tonight, but I only discovered the problem right before having to leave for my evening extracurriculars. This is what I get for trying JavaScript for the first time ever on a school project.)

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I’m liking the appearance a lot more now. However, I feel haunted by Everything you swallow will one day come up like a stone, a game and class reading of ours that used a very similar mechanic to mine. It’s not like I thought this was a totally unique idea, but now I find myself totally blocked, creatively, by the thought of the similarities between the two.

However, I’ve decided to embrace it--I don’t have enough time to come up with a new concept, and I still haven’t made a complete second iteration of this idea. So, I think tomorrow I will modify the site to make it more interactive in the same way Everything you swallow was, obviously using different specifics, but still. 

Right now I’ve logged about ten hours, but most of them were spent a) walking around Providence counting my steps or b) making a website and script that would probably take someone with more experience about twenty minutes, so I think my project could use a decent amount more of my time. I’ll spend at least four hours tomorrow (thank goodness my Mondays are never busy) and see where I stand.

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I’m spending most of my time today tweaking the website, adding more features and making it prettier.

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Digital Movement Workshop

find a more interesting way to pass the time

make it prettier

perhaps incorporate the images from each setting

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This is my draft/work in progress.

Each step you take away from the beginning, you learn more about me. The events correspond to places in the real world where actual things have happened to me. (The distances at Brown are exact. Beyond that, they’re approximate.)

It’s an intentionally unplayable game.