Poetics
In the composition of my project, I found myself taking many subtle cues from the Relay sources offered in the course thus far. My entire approach was to draw from the things I enjoyed about the Relays, but to do it my way.
For Part 1, I really wanted capture the feeling of the story of the Parkman murder. I wanted the scene and the version of the story that I created to be very dark and succinct all at the same time. The pictures were either scenes directly from (1st photo and the mandible) or related to the mood of the story (the remainder of the photos). The picture of the murder scene was manipulated via Pixlr. I smudged the image of the door, added text (in red for blood), blurred Parkman’s face, and bloated/pinched the picture to create a distorted look. The jigsaw picture was added to symbolize my state of mind and how I think about problems and questions.
The photos were linear to in way to pay homage to the clarity of scientific thought and reasoning. I drew off of the mood and writing style of Stars In The Clear Night Sky. I took notes from this site’s use of simple sentences and mysterious mood. For this element of my project, I drew off of The Cape, using the fragmented style of writing. I tried not to give everything away (ie the concrete details of the murder and police investigation). I wrote in this manner to lend to the mood rather than to the hard, detailed facts of the case which were not all that important.
I also interrupted the sequence of the story with quotes and the explicit statement of the discovery of the technique of human identification through skeletal evidence. I did this because I think that quotes added an element to think about while rest of the story is being read. The Snow quote that states that bones never lie and never forget lends to idea that answer is there, but it is waiting to be discovered by those who seek to find it. I also added my some of my own personal feelings about science, reason, and the unknown to convey the working of my mind, why it is important to me, and why I choose to learn about it and want to make it part of my career. I included the Maples quote because his feelings about science and bones mirror my own. The Wordle at the bottom of the page is just there to simply drive home the element of thought and reason. As well as to cement the idea of complexity and the unknown and the drive to find the answer.
For Part 2, I felt I had a little more freedom because I was speaking of a very dear personal memory. I included many personal photos from my home, of my family, as well as my friends because I wanted to convey the feeling and the atmosphere of my life through important people and places. I got this idea from the photos in The Cape and Heima, which were very candid and documented important places and things to the characters’ lives. I also included, what I thought to be fitting music (due to the spirit of the memory being recalled), which was also an idea I pulled from Heima’s photoblog page. I wanted to add the photo of an Ocala sunset and the map to give a concrete sense of where I come from. I was going for a “point of view” effect, so everyone could see what I see and almost feel what I feel, which was the case with the character elements and mapping in Sunshine ’69.
Finally, I purposely wrote in a style that was similar to Maus in Part 2. I noted before that I liked the use of time shifts in this book. I wanted to give a sense of what I felt and what was happening at that moment (with the dialogue), and how I look back on it now many years later.
