Conclusion:
Through the filters of the Internet
Detective and Lev Manovich's The
Language of New Media, we have investigated Rashomon Café.
In Form Criteria, I examined Rashomon
Café's non-traditional navigational features, the site's
user support options, and developer's use of the proper technologies.
Macromedia's Flash application and its use in developing the site
agreed with Manovich's theory of Selection
and showed us that by taking images, photographs, and audio samples
an original movie can be produced. Moving past the building elements
of the site, Rashomon Café uses stylistic features found
in movies and books. These characteristics are barrowed from one
genre and transcoded into another
genre.
To help the reader feel comfortable
with this new method of story telling, stylistic characteristics
are visible that resemble the cinema, printed word, and what Manovich
calls general-purpose interface (collectively known as HCI).
More specifically, the presentation Rashomon Café to the
audience has the look and feel of a cinema screen (16:9 ratio),
a printed text (left to right reading, the ability to move at
the readers pace rather than the authors), and a computer screen
(text boxes and hierarchical paths).
Finally, Internet Detective's Process
Criteria examined the (unneeded) elements of site and information
integrity. Process Criteria, as a research requirement, doesn't
work well with fictional, entertainment orientated web presentations.
On a personal note, I found Rashomon
Café to be much more than a simple story about a waiter
struggling to finish his work early to go on a long awaited date.
It's a web site that allows its readers, through Internet technology,
to go back to something basic - to read a short story. As you've
seen, the Internet Detective and Lev Manovich take this site and
tear it down into its structural and cultural elements. This process
has taught me a lot about Rashomon Café that I would never
realize if I had just stumbled across the site once.
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