Technical Aspects

Technologically, the site is somewhat intrusive. Windows pop up and stay up, insistently; the index page scrolls at a set rate that the viewer cannot control or change. While Karasic’s site works well (something to be expected from a former programmer) is it really a virtue for a site to be this insistent? A possible answer is that Karasic may be making a point with her insistent windows; she wants you to hear her story, to not ignore her.

The user interface, however, is quite usable. The windows are numbered and it is fairly clear how the story is supposed to work. The only instructions that Karasic provides are to line up the popup windows so that all can be seen at once; I think this is just a pointer towards noticing the interconnectedness of the three stories.

To navigate through the site, you click on one of the windows and it loads to the next. If you start at the "story" window, it is bound to the other two in such a way that advancing that window will cause the other two to advance. The other windows, "American Dream" and "My life" do not do this, or will only advance the other photo window. If you follow her directions, there are always three windows on screen at once: one text narrative, and two photographs.

Montage of windows from WLAJFA; from the ASCI.org site

While it is possible to go back through the windows, rather than only forward, it is not immediately obvious. There are no links backwards, so we are presented with the impression of a straight narrative that only leads in one direction. Whether this just a technical limitation of popup windows not being able to easily go backward or whether this was an artistic choice is hard to say. It’s a small enough site that it doesn’t really matter; it only takes about fifteen minutes to scroll through the site, and it’s much faster if one is just trying to get to a specific picture. Karasic’s site’s impact grows with time; it doesn’t take long to simply get the general idea.

George Legrady, an artist and art professor, wrote this essay about narrative interfaces, which could help provide a way to think about WLAJFA. He writes,

"But on further reflection, the somewhat taken-for-granted interface environment, consisting of title bars, selection buttons, color coding, defined pathways and sequentially determined events, reveals itself as the key component of the work - Its site of authorship. Without it, the Archive's stories, images, sounds and references would collapse into a meaningless mass of information; narratives without a place to belong, odds & ends without a context and framework. The interface metaphor provides the context that weaves the stories together and gives the work its meaning."

And, indeed, the method of the three pop-up windows, while not providing the entire meaning of the story, does help organize Karasic's fragmentary pictures and stories into what can be seen as a narrative whole. Juxtapositions of windows provide possible meanings for the site. A few windows are bound to each other, and a few images in the "American Dream" sequence are labled 'a' and 'b' and automatically refresh from 'a' to 'b' depending on what the main window displays. Interestingly, often these 'a' and 'b' images are between something brutal and an apparently banal piece of advertising (for instance, a lynching and a piece of furniture, or fire-bombed curches and an ad for Coca-cola).

The question of whether this site could be effective translated into print is an interesting one. Clearly, the method Karasic uses, of three side-by-side and interactive narratives could not be accomplished in print. I can visualize an essay version of this site; unlike some other sites (These Waves of Girls, for instance) it is linear enough -- it follows a conventional autobiography pattern -- that it could be put with the pictures into some kind of print medium, such as an article or essay. However, what would be lost is the feeling of juxtoposition and changeable-ness that the pop-up windows give.