In The Whale Hunt, Jonathan Harris retraces the whale hunt on the Alaskan arctic sea through the data of 9 straight days of photography (+3200 pics total). The project explores the possibilities of a computer framed storytelling format, how an interface can communicate and relive a high emotion human experience.
The interface is innovative and definitely suggesting more than a usual flickr photoset. Taking advantage of the ginormous amounts of pictures, he also gave us the possibility to break it down to many other substories—“cast”, “concepts” and “contexts” he calls them—which you can view by themselves: a food storyline, a whale storyline, an airport storyline, etc… all with a heartbeat (an excitation indicator) suggesting more or less the current level of excitement (or boredom) depending on the amount of pictures snapped in a given time frame.
Do take the time to explore this fully for there is a lot to see, digest and understand. Seeing twenty some people hauling a whale onto the frozen shore is quite an impressive sight.
And is it me, or do whale steaks look bloody blubber delicious?
Thanks for this one. Thoroughly mesmerizing.