Don't you want to travel?
The Assignment:
I’m doing the design assignment: Minimalist Travel Poster.
This assignment is to take a location from a movie and create a minimalist travel poster of it. I might have taken too many liberties with this one, but I found the examples very interesting. Instead of a movie, I used the old computer game the Oregon trail. In conjunction with my CIS class in Tokyo, I used our framework of the pioneers of technology. I changed the Oregon trail to Vannevar Bush’s Associative trail.
The Process:
I used Photoshop for this assignment. I started with a background photo of the Oregon trail. Then I changed the title on a new layer. After that I overlayed the picture of the memex on top of the background. Inside the frames of the memex I inserted pictures of the cholera Wikipedia page, as well as the Oregon trail picture. I found the polygon cropping tool very very useful for fitting the images into the screens. Finally, I added the text on the right side using the text tool.
The Story:
I’m sure most people are familiar with the old computer game The Oregon Trail. One has to gather supplies and people in order to travel the trail to Oregon. All the while you encounter dangerous obstacles such as huge rivers, mountains, and sicknesses. For me, it was my first introduction to computers and computer games.
This assignment is based on Vannevar Bush’s Memex and Associative Trails. I always found the idea of Associative Trails as an “Adventure through hyperspace” One can start on any subject, and follow associative trails throughout the vast database of knowledge that we have acquired throughout the ages. It is in this way that I thought of the relationship with the Oregon trail. In the Oregon trail, when one is presented with an obstacle, there are various choices to make. A, B, or C- each with a different outcome that leads to different circumstances in the future. Adding the memex into this, one can follow different trails of association to lead to different areas of knowledge.
If anyone has a nostalgic feeling for The Oregon Trail, leave a comment! I am half tempted to get the game again and relive my childhood endeavors of crossing the US in a wagon.
Photos taken from:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/daveward/69965183/ Oregon trail background
http://www.punny.org/money/the-carnival-of-personal-finance-68-hits-the-oregon-trail/ cholera Oregon trail
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cholera Choler Wikipedia link. (Printscreen)
At any rate you live. 
This is really clever. I like this. You died of dysentery!
I loved playing the Oregon Trail game as a kid, too! But I never would have thought of using it with the Associative trails like you did, so very clever!
This is a brilliant connection. Though I don’t have experience with the Oregon Trail game, I’ve certainly heard about it. What a wonderful play on words.
I don’t get the sense that the game is a hyper-text sort of adventure game. The play sequence sounds linear with a series of multiple choice challenges along the way.
I checked out the Flickr link and read that it’s possible to download and make these ancient games work through an emulator. I’m half-tempted to try it out one of these days.
[…] which we find such an image, colorize it and come up with some interesting story based on the the associative trails formed through interrogating the […]