As Orson Whales guides viewers on a scrambled hunt for the white whale, it carries through different meanings. To watch it straight through gives only a scattered narrative, almost like a fragmented stream of consciousness. Still, anybody familiar with the story of Moby Dick can gather its intentions as a video. As the images cycle and hit their cues along side the music, everything comes together to form the end result. Still, however, the parts of the whole can tell–and no doubt have told–their own stories, from the very literal novel, serving now as a canvas, to the song, setting a tone and a tempo.
But these separate stories are not all told simultaneously, nor do they converge to tell the same story. Instead, they all come together to form a new journey. This is a path that is unchanging in its presentation, but likely not the same for any two viewers. As such, the majority of the video’s impact is, I feel, evocative. To those more familiar with the novel’s plot, this may be a gripping hunt for the white whale, riddled with vengeance and music fueling rage and confusion. to those that haven’t read the work, the video still combines various arts to produce different feelings and interpretations.
Though the work is unchanging, unlike the other two works, it is much the same in that interpretation from one person to another is likely always different. All the various elements come together to form an experience that anyone can access, but that nobody can experience like anybody else. It is the difference between seeing the video, hearing its music, and then stepping back and taking it all in. The cumulative effort of all the different mediums transforms a song, or a book, or a series of paintings into a collaborative work, and takes all the evocative meaning from those works and combines them into an amorphous thought, which can then be molded to any viewers’ tastes.