Who is Flora?

Author: Travis Alber

Web URL or medium: www.whoisflora.net

Description: I partially uncovered Flora's story through a well-worn stack of postcards at a dusty Midwestern estate sale in the summer of 1999. She had spent many months during the 1940s traveling alone across the United States and had consistently sent postcards back home to her mother in Peoria, Illinois. When I happened across her hand-written cards at the dissolution of her own estate, I was taken with the stories her cards revealed. I felt as though Flora and I had similar worldviews, and I easily felt a connection to her themes of freedom, loneliness, youth, death, memory and love. "Who Is Flora" is a dialog between Flora's travels and my interpretations. The story itself is presented on-line through a series of interactive screens. In addition to Flora's screens, my own screens share my reflections and thoughts, which are laid out visually to the right of Flora's stories. Graphic design, sound, motion, and text help Êfurther the sense of time and place to draw the reader more fully into the experience. Since this story is also a website it is constantly growing and changing; pieces are added as others are changed and deleted as the story grows.

Technical requirements: Current web browser with Flash 5+ plugin.

Start/re-start instructions: Load URL to start. Reload URL to restart.