Artist Statement

I created a website using HTML CSS and Javascript to tell the story of my linguistic background in an interactive game with 3 levels/pages. I strategically break the 3 languages into their own levels/pages in order to highlight them individually and to increase the difficulty over time. I use Javascript to create the gameplay loop and buttons, while I use CSS to style and add animations.

I decided to make this website in order to capture the experience of learning languages simultaneously in a way that could be understood by someone who doesn't share the same experience as me. Some of the earliest memories I have were of me trying to communicate with my relatives in a broken italian-english fusion, with a lot of help from my parents. Memories like those capture the linguistic predicament I found myself at birth. I was learning more than just English from birth and it was difficult to comprehend at that age. I never had any formal education in any other language than English and Spanish as a kid, so I had to figure it out just by listening and speaking. This felt like I was navigating an office building in the dark. Constantly hitting obstacles and losing track of where I was. In addition to Italian, the languages of Venetian and Friulian were commonly spoken when visiting my mom and dad’s side of the family respectively. In homage to my personal experiences and cultural heritage, I packed this website with special hidden references and symbolic meaning in the phrases and pictures. A few examples include: child-like drawings (reference to my childhood), sun (symbol in the Piazza Liberta, Udine), & logs (Venice was built on logs). To keep the authenticity of the experience even more, I made the phrases of each level’s phrases accurately depict realistic moments.

The way I capture the comprehension of this experience is through the searching game, where the user has to drag the mouse in the playable area in order to find hidden words to complete the sentences (translation and responding). I also utilize pictures that pop up to interrupt and cover parts of the playable area, to make the search more difficult. Lastly, I made the phrases required to be completed in order to add a memory aspect to the searching process.