Document:Q10923

"Saving The Alphabet" is an interactive story for the web which is created entirely in Flash and uses text, images, and audio. The work itself is a commentary on the use of language in a digital age. It addresses governmental and corporate threats to the free use of language, as language is simultaneous constructed and deconstructed by Orwellian double-speak, trademark claims, and invented etymologies on the web.
The story requires that users click on the appropriate buttons to proceed through the narrative. There is no set order of events--in fact, the arbitrary navigation of users through the story reinforces the underlying theme of how language is being co-opted, and how that co-option is often capricious and arbitrary.
"Saving The Alphabet" is also a statement about the impermanence and permeability of language, and how language, although connected to a historic (and gradually evolving) lexicon, can be altered, corporatized, and destroyed. Additionally, those who navigate the site themselves become a contributing factor in the decay of the story, and their contribution to the fictional death of language suggests our wider social and aesthetic responsibility.
The work requires approximately 5-10 minutes to view.
To see this work online, please visit http://www.SavingTheAlphabet.com