Aura (due 10/22)

Description

Imagine a website based on a feeling, an emotion, or some kind of intangible experience/phenomenon. What does a scream look like as a website? A cry? How might a website feel like a maternal space? Or like a dream aimlessly drifting between different states?

Start by writing a short prompt/expression of that website, in whatever way makes sense to you — a paragraph, a poem, a description. Try to examine and pull apart the feeling you are trying to capture. What makes that feeling unique? How does that feeling escape attempts to clearly describe it? How do you personally experience that feeling?

Avoid writing and thinking about the technicalities and functionality of a website at first. While writing, just focus on the feeling and imagine a website that is unmoored from technical realities. If drawing and sketching helps, do that as well!

After writing, we’ll meet to look at the writing and discuss ways to functionally express/capture/embody that feeling as a website.


Writing Discussion Questions

  • What are some personal experiences that come to mind when thinking about that feeling?
  • What makes this particular articulation of the feeling unique? How does it differ from how you think about it?
  • Would the expression of the feeling benefit from interaction of some kind? Or might interaction distract from it?
  • Share any ideas, tools, plugins that might help with the functionality of the site.

Considerations

  • What are some existing functionalities/material realities of websites that we can use to help express that feeling? How might scrolling feel like falling? How might clicking blindly through hyperlinks feel like getting lost?
  • Reflect on feelings you have while navigating the web and websites. What are those feelings and what is it that provokes them? Is it the particular look of a button? Is it an onslaught of pop-ups? Is it a small, barely noticeable detail, tucked in a corner?

Examples