A celestial centipede crawls along the sky, clinking.

Reflections bounce off its metal skin, playing with our imagination.

I have resurrected a project done at the Center for Educational Technology at Middlebury College for more modern browsers and screens. See if you have what it takes to PAUSE.

The mission statement is more relevant now than before. This project was completed before Youtube and Twitter were founded, which shortened our collective attention spans to a paltry 20 seconds. A recent Slate article takes on the fallacy of the immediate small reward:

Ever find yourself sitting down at the computer just for a second to find out what other movie you saw that actress in, only to look up and realize the search has led to an hour of Googling? Thank dopamine. Our internal sense of time is believed to be controlled by the dopamine system. People with hyperactivity disorder have a shortage of dopamine in their brains, which a recent study suggests may be at the root of the problem. For them even small stretches of time seem to drag. An article by Nicholas Carr in the Atlantic last year, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” speculates that our constant Internet scrolling is remodeling our brains to make it nearly impossible for us to give sustained attention to a long piece of writing. Like the lab rats, we keep hitting “enter” to get our next fix.

Give it a rest, give it some pause.

The streets of Heraklion (Crete) and Athens, Wooster Collective in mind.

Below is a first stab at taking Massive Journey to the next level. The Flash object is interactive. Click on it or into it, and then use the Arrow Keys to maneuver. Currently, this is just the sketch of a larger idea but already gives a good impression of the possibilities.

Climb the steps to peace, to balance and delicate sufficiency.

A distant relative emerges from the waters, scrapes its long neck and plunges its life into a restless rust.