With a background in graphic design, I have always been captivated by the power of the image, born and living in South Africa for 18 years, I have been very fortunate to see how powerful these images can be. However I always thought that if these images could suddenly come alive and tell you their story, no medium would be able to compete with this.
My great attraction to multimedia is that it can get the user
emotionally attached. I want to get a reaction from the user. I want to
get the user to confront themselves, to question their actions and
reflect on what they have done in the past. If I am successful in
getting an emotional response from the user I will have achieved a
great deal. For past three years I have been collecting CD-ROMs. The
one downfall of this medium that I have noticed is that it seems to
lack emotion. With this in mind, I started the MA with the aim of doing
a piece, which was loaded with emotion. And through this emotion I
would be able to educate the user.
I find it very interesting how people have accepted the limitations of
multimedia, from slow downloading speeds on the Internet to slow
processor on personal computers. I realised that this acceptance could
be exploited to test an individuals acceptance of a piece that explores
stuttering. This piece would test how accommodating the user is towards
a piece, which exploits the limitations of multimedia to depict
stuttering.
I am a stutterer, I live with it everyday do not have the freedom to
walk into a shop and ask for a packet of sweets, for fear of not being
able to say the words. I do not have the freedom to tell my girlfriend
that I love her for fear of blocking on those famous words. Through my
experience of being a stutterer, I have had to cope with abuse and
insult from people who think that stuttering is a form of stupidity.
The content is all personally driven. I wanted to depict stuttering
through image rather than showing medical charts and fancy 3D
animations of possible effected areas of the brain, etc. I have used my
own voice and childhood pictures to keep the piece entirely personal.
All of the sound bites are all my own experience and the sound files
have not been modified to increase the effect of stuttering.
Objective
The overall objective of the project is to create a multimedia piece,
which educated people about stuttering. Keeping in mind that most of
the investigations and research being done about stuttering
concentrates on the medical causes of this impediment. So my aim is to
depict through image and sound how it feels to be a stutterer.
Through my experience, educational institutions have buried their heads
in the sand and neglected students with speech impediments. This
disregard then rubs off on fellow students, and breeds ignorance and
can damage the individual. So the initial aim is to educate people to
become a little more tolerant toward stutterers. Through this
experience the user would leave a little more informed and have a
greater understanding of the problems that a stutterer face everyday
However I must stress that I am not looking for sympathy from the user,
just a little patience.
Educational institutions would be my primary audience though it does
appeals to everyone. The piece was intended to act as an installation
piece in a busy area where the user is watched and directed by
on-lookers. With the aim of trying to capture the anticipation and
interference that a stutterer experiences everyday.
If you have ever spoken to a person who stutters you will know that
there are repetitions and long pauses. These cannot be helped but have
you found yourself beginning to get impatient or even trying to finish
to sentence for the stutterer. If you have, you are not the only one. I
have tried to capture this impatience by delaying the speed of links. I
want the user to wait and get a little impatient; this heightens the
experience and gives you the experience of listening to a stutterer.
All together the navigation, sound and images are all designed to show
how it feels to stutter.
Through the subversion of sound and navigation, to delay images and
sounds, sometimes the images will appear before the sounds, sometimes
repeat trying to imitate stuttering. Constantly testing the users
patience, showing them how it feels to stutter.
Navigation
In current multimedia titles navigation has become accommodating
towards the user, giving them the exact choices and leading them by the
hand through the work. Never confronting them, never getting too
difficult or challenging keeping it user friendly and accessible.
In my piece the navigation devices are triggered through sound and
colour. The sound links correspond to the colour of the individual
sections. The idea being that beneath a sound and colour lies another
level, another insight. The user determines the navigation. If the
sound bite appeals to the user then the user can move to another level.
However the user will not actually know where they are going until the
screen appears. Through frequent use of the piece the user would get
accustomed to the sounds and colour of screens and links. In certain
sections the links have been changed to predetermine their path through
the piece.
When designing the interfaces I wanted to try and capture the
confusions, panic and repetition of speaking with a stutter. There was
a need to show that beneath the surface there was far more than the eye
can see. This is captured in the interface. The blurred and layered
images explore how I see stuttering through image and type. The screens
are very busy with image and sound to show the confusion and
aggregation suffered by stutterers. The screens have been designed to
examine the user interaction with the piece and the screen. Small type
and images forcing the user to move closer to the screen make them
uncomfortable and agitated.
Altogether the piece strives to educate the user without spoon feeding
them, which I hope makes it far more engaging and thought provoking.
The Web Site
The web site (http://www.dmc.dit.ie/martin) has examples from the CD-ROM. A few of the examples
require plug-ins. You will need the Shockwave and the Quick Time
plug-in. These plug-ins can be downloaded at
http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/ and http://www.apple.com respectively.
The Quick time movies will take time to download so you've been warned.
The web site should give you an indication of what I am trying to
achieve. I see the site as a showcase of the CD. Hopefully viewers will
get an idea of the frustration of stuttering. I would love to make the CD available to more people but I do not have the finances to do this. I have to stress that this is not a commercial venture, but if anyone out there has ideas about how to get this CD to a wide audience, I would love to hear from you.
Hope you enjoy the site.
Email: nkosi@hotmail.com
Change is as inexorable as time, yet nothing meets with more resistance - Benjamin Disraeli
September 25, 1998