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Zellen continues the exploration of disorder constrained
to a limited spatial entity she has entitled "Visual
Chaos". The sum of the project's elements, as she
states, "all adds up to 'visual chaos'". Throughout
the work space is constantly fractured and images distorted.
The pop-up windows appear constantly, confronting the
viewer with new images and dividing their attention.
The "pop-up windows are meant to be an interuption,
a way of breaking up and apart the sameness of the surface
space of the screen" says Zellen. Added to this
is the fact that almost every image is kept from being
completely clear: most are either blurred out of focus
or fractured by blocks of colour. This allows the viewer
to encounter different sights without ever being completely
certain of everything they represent. In some cases
the viewer is able to interact with one of the sights,
but doing so often furthers the chaos inherent in the
elements of the visual space. For example, on one page
the user must click on a drop-down menu to continue,
but doing so creates a popup where a viewer can click
through lines of poetry that flow, and seem to relate
to city ideas, but do not make complete sense. This
poetry goes on looping forever, until the user realizes
that they can now continue the navigating in the main
browser window. In another instance, the user can rollover
fractured sections of a highway photo, but doing so
fractures the image even more by changing each section
into a mirror of the section below it. All of the while
images continue to appear in pop-ups, filling up the
user's taskbar and creating more and more of a clutter
of windows; not only is the user's visual field filled
with chaos and confusion, but so is the medium upon
which the artwork is viewed. This element of chaos is
made more apparent when the user reaches the end and
closes the window; a clutter of pop-ups moving about
on the desktop are left over. As Zellen explains "I
wanted to create a journey though a fictional city space
down a road, path or avenue cluttered with visual information
where there are things to look at and to read."
Clicking through the changing windows and fractured
spaces, the viewer partakes in a navigation that is
not at all like that of a normal website.
Exploring "Visual Chaos", the user is forced
to navigate in a way that breaks the paradigms of normal
website navigation, and becomes akin to undertaking
a virtual journey. Random city scenes are presented
in a chaotic manner but like Zellen's other works, are
contained within a common visual space - the computer
screen - ensuring that the entire experience does not
devolve into randomness but is held and contained. As
the viewer travels through the various fractured locales
and situations in the "visual chaos" browser
window, visuals appear in pop-ups like those that one
would pass by in a city: they appear out of nowhere
and go by, glimpses of people doing everyday things
are seen, actions are seen but the causes are not. However,
the viewer's attention is not allowed to be taken away
by the pop-ups; whenever the viewer is finished looking
at or interacting with the pop-ups, they must always
return to the main browser window to continue the journey.
This technique creates a sort of virtual passage within
each subsequent page. The user goes to one place (a
page) in which pop-ups occur like events or sights that
would occur in that place. The user experiences these
events and sights and, having done so, must return to
the main page and search for the way out of this place.
Doing so, they are brought to the next place, in order
to experience it then find their way to the next. By
creating this feeling, Zellen creates a virtual space
within a web-browser which the user is no longer navigating
through, but journeying through. The fact that this
space is populated by urban visuals creates an impression
the user is traveling through virtual and indistinct
cityscape.
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