Review 3

Kolton Smith

English 214

Aurelea Mahood

November 2009

Review of a short story-poem-comic strip-musical.

Urbanalities, by babel and escha, is part of the electronic literature collection. It is a great collaboration that uniquely ties flash, music and poetry into a pleasant rollercoaster ride that requires no interaction.

All the reader has to do is sit back and relax. The visuals are very aesthetically pleasing and goes together with the music harmoniously. At the same time the text is flashing at random on the screen. It seems like every component compliments each other. The piece uses visuals that only use a blue, red, white and black theme. Some of the visuals include landscapes, items, and comics. With each different chapter the music is different. It have a professional quality to it. They could even release a CD with the music on it. Like many ELC pieces the text  can easily be overlooked, but Urbanalities has a poetic quality that even a beginner can understand.

The piece has many meanings in it. Most readers won’t get it all in one viewing but if watched enough  a connected story line reveals itself. This story line seems is very political and includes opinions on life.  With ordinary poetry it’s sometimes hard to decode what the author is trying to say, with this piece the visuals act as an aid that help

Overall this piece is by far my favorite of the ELC. It easily surpasses babel’s other piece Inanimate Alice, Episode 1: China. It contains a quality I have not yet experienced with other ELC pieces. I can only hope that there is more pieces like this that are created because I toughly enjoy them.