Angels
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The piece takes the form of series of textual screens that use animation, interactivity and programming, as well as music, text and images to focus on the state-of-mind of an asylum-seeker.
The text of Angels is narrated by its chief protagonist, Nolita. Nolita is a thirty year old female asylum-seeker from South-eastern Europe displaced by inter-ethnic war. Angels is loosely-written in the first person and it takes the form of a fragmented, inchoate monologue (a ‘mono-fog’) to reflect the traumatised mental state of this asylum-seeker. The tone of the piece moves through lament, trauma, confusion, fear and pain.
The piece is both hypertextual and episodic in design. In order, to minimise the reader’s sense of fragmentation and confusion, Angels is structured on the metaphor of a house. It is divided up into rooms (representing individual sections of text or files) that are named after the structure of a house (for example, Angels begins with a ‘front door’ sequence).
The on-screen navigation is designed to look like the ground plan of a standard brick built 2-storey Victorian house. This overarching metaphor reflects the fact that, one of the central issues surrounding asylum-seeking is the issue of housing. Asylum-seekers are temporarily housed by the system, but rarely given a sense of having a home or any kind of security. This on-screen navigation will be present on every screen (on the right hand side of the text) and provides both a visual brand, as well as acting as a central visual metaphor for the piece.
Angels has a number of other visual and textual metaphors that reflect the overall aims of the piece. For example, many aid-workers assisting asylum-seekers note that they are constantly being questioned by the British authorities despite their recent traumas. Angels questions this practice by making use of the meta-textual qualities of the computer media (the use of forms, buttons and other programmable elements) to question the reader as they negotiate the text.
The work is aimed at wide audience. It is aimed to make an artistic and a social point. It is not aimed to be a commercial product. It will be distributed ultimately, therefore, using the Internet, via a specially-designed web site. Angels features animation, some programming, as well as music, text and images. Therefore, Angels is produced using Macromedia Flash MX.
Last Updated : 2nd June 2004 by Gavin Stewart