Ghost City

Author: Jody Zellen

Web URL or medium: www.ghostcity.com

Description: Ghost City is a website that focuses on the representation of the city by the mass media. It uses the space of the web as a sculptural space, allowing viewers to interact with animated graphics to delve deeper and deeper into an imaginary city.

Ghost City is a labyrinthine environment through which viewers can navigate, either following the linear narrative that unfolds by moving from page to page, or they can delve into the non-linear chaos of random links. Each space is made up of appropriated images and texts. The images are culled from various print media sources. The texts are either found passages from urban theory or specifically written poetic musings on the city.

Rather than present static images, Ghost City is a collage of moving parts. It is a pulsating grid of flashing images that loop indefinitely. The viewer is an urban wanderer moving through the site, step by step, page by page. One moves forward and back retracing ones steps within the urban grid, discovering new spaces and new meanings. Ghost City is about memory, and about traveling through time and space. The time is infinite. The space is finite. Yet the time and space of Ghost City metaphorically relate to the experience of the city where people walk and talk and interact. Within the confines of Ghost City visitors can pause and think and move backwards and forwards. Ghost City is a city of fragments. A memory. A ghost of reality. A ghost city. Ghost City was begun in 1997 and has been changed and updated over the last four years. Each visit to Ghost City while seemingly similar, upon close examination reveals new avenues to explore.

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