Understanding VORN
Posted on November 2, 2005 at 10:15 pm by jaclyn_kennard"Understanding VORN" seems to be a lot different than a lot of the other examples of Textual Media that we’ve studied, since it relies mostly on the input of the internet rather than the input of the reader. The only interactivity that the reader has with this program is to press the "Shuffle" button to mix up the images, and the rest of the input the program does itself by pictures from various blogs on the Internet.
VORN also doesn’t provide the reader with any text to read, unless you click the picture and click to the link to the corresponding blog. The text there, however, was not created by the author of VORN, it was created by the blog user whose picture was pulled by the VORN program. The links also don’t give us any more depth or insight to the purpose of "VORN" - VORN does not have an underlying storyline. The only theme to this is that each picture is pulled from a blog because the picture name either starts with the letter "V", "O", "R", or "N".
This is interesting to play with, but it leaves the reader wondering - what is the purpose of this? The title, "Understanding VORN", also seems to be misleading - what exactly is there to understand? I went to the "About" section to find out, and what it told me was that "the chaotic, unpredictable nature of UNDERSTANDING VORN reflects the chaotic, unpredictable nature of VORN Magazine". As a reader, I would have never figured that out from just playing this game.
November 3rd, 2005 at 1:40 PM
I didn’t really get Vorn initially. I just jumped into it. Then I broke the sterotype of guys not reading directions and went back to do so hehe… After that, I then had an idea of what the project was about. The directions said the project picks randomly stuff with the letter V, O, R, N last from various live journals. It said a lot of them / most of them are from high school kids. I think various ones are from college kids too. I can across a girl that appeared to be modeling pics in her dorm room. However, I couldn’t tell because it was a journal in not in english. I take the entries for the project come from all around the world. It seems they focus on the US and countries in Europe. There are several languages spoken in Europe.
The entries reflected the time of the year. I came across pictures of people in halloween costumes. I clicked on the origin of various blogs. I went to a blog that took me to Facebook pictures of a girl. I happen to have Facebook which is way for students to network and keep in touch with each other.
It was tempting to leave a message on the blogs I came across in Vorn. I would have possibly freaked out some of these people being like “Hey your site or site came up on VORN ect.” They might think I’m like some sorda of crazy person. You always here about stuff on the news about kids safety and the internet.
The site directions said it pulled from high school kids journals which made me think of my concert last night. The main part of the concert was with 250 singers + an orchestra doing in which Jhon Rutters Requiem. The concert was a choruses of choruses from a blend of group college and high school choruses. Back stage, there were high school music directors ordering around the high school students and being like parents. At some points, I think they did tried to do the same to the college people. That was annoying. I didn’t need to be treated like a kid. I’m so glad that I am out of high school. Vorn connected to journals of typical stuff high school kids talk about. For example one girl talked about her last soccer game she was in for high school. She had pictures of herself and friends. It must be her senior year.
I wander why the creator of Vorn focuses on just two blogs with young people mostly. Why not have it pull from a mixed group of ages. This would make it diverse as far as material and views that are presented. Vorn used a degree of randomness to it. When searching for something with N, one response was nick. I used some randomness on an online poem where the last word in each line of the poem had a link. For a lot of the words. I would type in the last word in google and pick a link to one of the sites that would popped up. However, for some of the words, I had specific ideas of what I what wanted them to link to. The poem reflects my experience with Alternative Spring Break in Eastman, Georgia with Habitat for Humanity
November 3rd, 2005 at 1:42 PM
Here’s a link to my poem.