"day of silence" project.....

[thoreau]

Brett (septimuswarren) is leading his glbt student group through the 'National Day of Silence' on Friday - to bring the topic of anti-glbt bullying, harrassment and name-calling to the forefront. Students will go the entire day without speaking.

He asked me to make him an LJ Icon that talked about the issue he could use here and on Facebook. I decided to do an animation using smileys or "emoticons". Something all "know" and use occasionally.....

Slide #1 - Is anti-LGBT name-calling, bullying and harassment happening at your school?



Slide #2 - What are you doing to end the silence?



Slide #3 - DAY OF SILENCE, April 17th 2009



and it animates like this:



It's a tough thing to design a piece like this that is 100x100 pixels.

thoughts? other ideas?

Comments

[bukephalus.livejournal.com]

Love it! Great work as always.

[surewood31.livejournal.com]

Great design.

Unfortunately, I know at my high school, this demonstration would be taken as a challenge from the bullies to go out of their way to MAKE someone talk that day. Wish the students well!

[khrysso.livejournal.com]

For some reason, I can't view the (gif, is it?) as an animated graphic, so I'm envisioning the story, as it were, as a two-part drama with one possible resolution, i.e., 1) hate-behavior is manifest right here; 2) there appears to be a conspiracy of silence about hate-behavior here; 3) by dramatizing the silence, perhaps we may come to appreciate the gravity of our complicity with it.

If I were to be seated in a room with these icons on the table, one to a page, and were invited to manipulate them at will while I waited for other members of a focus group to assemble, my first move would be, in slide #2, to move the icon up so that it rests between the second and third lines, to wit: "What are you doing to stop :-X the silence?"

If I liked how that looked (and my hypothesis is that I would), I would back up to slide #1 and move that icon up between the third and fourth lines, à la, "Is LGBT name-calling, bullying, and harassment 8-O happening at your school?"

My rationale in making these moves would be A) to get the graphic as close to the words I want to associate with it as possible (i.e., mistreatment phrases = shocking in #1 and silence = SOP in #2), and B) to move the focal points of each of the first two slides closer to the centers of their windows.

My broader rhetorical (in the sense of persuasion rather than of sophistry) question is, why plant such a powerful image of silence smack dab in the center of a story about ending silence? There's something that strikes me as somehow dissonant between the progression of meanings verbally vis-à-vis the progression of meanings verbally.

I think it's because the purpose of the day (though clearly not of the campaign) is to dramatize the silence: not the antidote, not yet; first things first.

I think perhaps I would use language in the second slide to ask something more along the lines of, "How would you feel if you didn't even have the option of speaking out against injustice?"—though obviously in pithier wording than that... It seems to me that the significance of a day of silence is to foster appreciation of our freedom of speech by showing us what we got *before* it's gone.

I agree that using the universally recognized symbolism of the emoticons is a powerful way to hook seamlessly into the vernacular with an economy of pixels.

(Note: I only went into this much detail because you asked. I'm not normally this intrusive unless I'm either being paid for it or solicited to contribute to a worthy effort pro bono.)

[khrysso.livejournal.com]

What I meant, of course, was, "between the progression of meanings verbally vis-à-vis the progression of meanings GRAPHICALLY."

[low-fat-muffin.livejournal.com]

thanks sweetheart. :) writing a bunch of text in a 100x100 box is (barbie voice)really hard work(end barbie voice). I think your feedback is awesome, though. I think that the re-arrangement would work particularly well in a set of big-ass posters. but alas - its a 100 pixel box. LOL!

[joebehrsandiego.livejournal.com]

I like the animation sequence a lot. And given the constraints you have the text is fine. :>)

[bearfuz.livejournal.com]

This is really great! I notice that you said "end the silence" in your text and "stop the silence" in your GIF. Those two things resonate slightly differently with me; I wonder which shade of meaning you prefer.

Do you have the option of adding a fifth "panel" between the first and second? I personally would like something that links the first two ideas with each other: that the anti-gay bullying is hidden (and therefore protected) by unacceptable silence. Without that further exposition, the word "silence" doesn't have anything to refer back to, and people have to make that jump. That's just me being fussy, though...

[low-fat-muffin.livejournal.com]

but i like your particular brand of fussyness. :)

the official slogan is "what are you doing to end the silence?" yikes. thats a good catch.

I think Brett is going to use the third slide without an animation though.

[low-fat-muffin.livejournal.com]

here's the site for the program:

http://www.dayofsilence.org/index.cfm

[balanceinchaos.livejournal.com]

I think it's great!

I was going to do the day of silence, but doing so would have fucked up my presentation group because we have to rehearse our oral presentation, due monday, and several members will be out of town over the weekend... so friday is our last chance to rehearse...

can't do that silent... which I know is the point... but I'm not going to screw over my partners after 3 months of work just to make a point.

[budmassey.livejournal.com]

Brilliant as always.

[septimuswarren.livejournal.com]

There's some great feedback here. I had a talk with my head of school today about my participation in the day. I also had a long talk tonight about it with Ron. There's going to be a shift in it for me, I think, but before I make any decisions I have to do some real thinking, processing, and soul searching over the next 24 hours. Thanks again for your help.

[low-fat-muffin.livejournal.com]

sounds major! don't hesitate to pickupnze'phone!