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Mobile Figures

Interactive essay exploring historical metaphors and metonyms for the Irish in a virtual potato field.

Year 2005
Format
Website
Credits by David Lloyd
Design and Programming by Erik Loyer

An interactive essay about historical metaphors and metonyms for the Irish in which the non-linear aspects of the essay’s content are visualized as a virtual potato field whose root structure users can navigate at will.  A collaboration with scholar David Lloyd.

Video Traversal

A high quality recording of the project as a user might experience it.


Lloyd’s essay has been divided into discreet chunks--represented here as potatoes--through which multiple threads of meaning and argument intersect.
Clicking on a potato brings up its associated text, along with interface for navigating along the various interwoven threads of the work.
By expanding the reader interface, the user reveals non-linear connections between themes, keywords, and works referenced in the piece.
The “underground” area contains archival imagery which illustrates Lloyd’s points about common stereotypes of the Irish.