Summary

  “Motions” is a piece of digital media created to shed light on an underground issue. This digital poetry piece takes advantage of digital elements paired with powerful text to help spread awareness of sex trafficking. Hazel Smith, Will Luers, and Roger Dean use stories and statistics to relay information about sex trafficking often using the second person perspective. ("Motions").  Making you the subject creates a personal link to the reader. Even though the reader knows this is not a story about themselves, this personal touch gives the reader empathy to the real victim by placing themselves in a milder version the victim's situation. The use of understanding permits the reader to digest the information on a personal level, therefore increasing the impact.
 

Argument

    In addition to creating empathy, this story uses sound, images, and motion to invoke a feeling of powerlessness in the reader. In “Motions” all of these elements layer on top of each other and separated by pages. On each page, it can be difficult to find organization and these elements frequently overlap and are placed in a chaotic manner (Smith, Luers, and Dean). The reader can only control which page to be on and many of the assets are intentionally hard to read, placed in a chaotic manner. These move about the screen to remind the reader and overlap, in such a way that the reader often has to wait and take pauses in reading to wait for the movement to subside. This reminds the reader that the story has the power. The reader simply is not given the tools to organize the chaos moving about the screen even for a brief moment to read. "Motions" provokes a sensation of powerlessness by integrating textual story with sensuous effects in order to bridge the gap between real experience and textual narrative further empowering the message. There is a true interdependence between all of the generated aspects crating for a powerful experience.