Week 4- Visualization, Hallucinations and Surreal Screen Spaces
Jonathan Harris and Sep Kamvar- We feel fine
We Feel Fine is an online exploration and database, which saves posts from different users around the world. Each user’s story (which relates to a certain emotion) is visually represented by a particle, resulting in a mass of moving particles on the screen. The particles size and color depend on the characteristics of the sentence; (positive thoughts are portrayed with brightly colored particles, negative thoughts are portrayed with dark colored particles… Big particles mean long sentences & small particles represent short sentences). If the mouse hovers for a few seconds, tons of particles will swarm around it, anxiously waiting to get selected. When I first visited this site, I was amazed when my mouse was suddenly surrounded by these colorful particles. It seems like these things have minds of their own, and were fighting for attention.
It is interesting how temporary relationships are developed when reading a post from another (curiosity of the post, based on size and color of particle determine which relationship we engage in).
The website is a direct reflection of how important social networking is in our lives. This project is entirely dependent on the Internet, and what users post. Everyone these days is trying to express themselves, and differentiate from others; the Internet is the most accessible medium to fulfill one’s need of self- expression.
The particles result in a very remarkable artwork, and everyone creates it. We Feel Fine leaves the creation of the art up to the people around the world. Harris and Kamvar do not know how many particles will be on the webpage (or how big and what color they will be). It is completely dependent on the amount of blog entries and the content of each one found on the web.
You can also search the particles based on specific demographics (age, location, weather, sex, date of post). By doing this, the user can choose what group of people they would like to form a relationship with. By allowing the user to have the choice to narrow the demographic, they are given the power to meet their own needs and quench their curiosities. This is an effective way for users to get what they want out of participating in the work. I love that the creators gave the users the freedom to explore what they want; they can look at certain demographics, or explore the different movements. These movements are just different visual representations of all the posts; you would have to visit the site to fully understand!
Julia Rao 
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