In "Virtual Tourisms," history seems "elusive, presenting itself as an amalgamation of fragments and contrasting narratives that may never be grasped in their totality. For Kendrick, the hotel serves as an interpretive lens to examine the cultural imaginary of Los Angeles as seen from a variety of social class positions. Although not exactly the heterotopic space imagined by Foucault, hotels do seem to occupy a liminal position between myth and reality; a carved out social space that functions according to its own rules and internal economy. In Virtual Tourisms, the hotel also offers a concrete manifestation of abstract cultural ideals; a symptom of the collective unconscious of a particular age and geographic region." – Steve Anderson, Vectors Editor
Experiencing the Work
Visitors navigate the work by moving and clicking with a cursor, though much of the work – with the notable exception of scroll bars – may be navigated by keyboard or similar non-mouse methods. The visitor then navigates through the website by clicking on images or text to bring up images and descriptions of hotels in Los Angeles in the late nineteenth century. Once a character has been selected, it is not possible to navigate back to the index page. Most of the content of the work uses serif fonts with headings in a script font. Text on images, such as maps, is very small. Captions for images also use a small font size, and text overlaps on the maps and floor plans of hotels. On the index page, the menu items are similar in color to the background design. Also, the Brochures and the “Tour the Raymond” pages contain headings that are similar in color to the background color. Some copies of this version have been preserved with Conifer, meaning that text is not available to screen reading software or similar tools.
1 COPY IN THE NEXT
Published in Summer, 2012 by Vectors in Volume 3, Issue 2.
Preserved with Conifer by the Electronic Literature Lab. This copy was given to the Electronic Literature Lab by Erik Loyer in November of 2021.
PUBLICATION TYPE
Online Journal
COPY MEDIA FORMAT
Web