group 3 critique

Andria Thomas (ant7y@sunipc-11.unixlab.Virginia.EDU)
Thu, 25 Apr 1996 22:34:10 -0400 (EDT)

The entry into the project is eerie--I feel like I'm the face in the
center drowning in bright sparkly blue waves. As a technical note,
there's a link off to the left: "hyperdreaming" whose color is the same
as the background, so it is almost invisible. Then again, the link
doesn't go anywhere so maybe that's for the best.

As another technical note, you're missing a lot of end quotes on your
links, which work when viewing from Netscape 1.1 in Bryan and the Stacks,
but do not work with Netscape 2.0. All I get is the text within the tag,
rather than a link.

I love the humor in this project--I can never remember any of my own
dreams, but I don't think I've ever dreamt anything like "Nelson Mandela
and the Subaru Zombies from Hell." :)

I wonder about the logic behind the links. The only logical link I could
find was from "aaw5a/isnt.html", where "pitch black" actually led to an
entirely black page... Are random words linked, to
create a patchwork of the dreams of your group members? An interesting
idea, since this could almost create one long, quirky dream that doesn't
make any more sense in pieces than it does as a whole. It could also
resemble one restless night's sleep, with the dreamer waking up several
times and then drifting back into another random dream. If this were the
case though, I think I would like to see a little more randomness and
confusion among the dreams. As they stand now, each dream is on a single
page, enclosed and included in full. What if, after "waking up" on one
page and clicking on that link you enter into the middle of someone
else's dream, and that dream doesn't reach a logical conclusion? I like
how you're generating random links in some spots, but more confusion
could be fun too.

There's one page which has no way out (no links from it) "layra/define.html"
Is this intentional? with the stark black background and white text, I
felt extraordinarily trapped, and momentarily fearful until I reached for
the "back" button...

Overall, I enjoyed this project. Looking in on other people's dreams has
a voyeuristic quality to it, and my only comment would be to make the
experience more dreamlike and less storylike.

Andria