The general purpose of composing object narratives, in my opinion, is to look for the meaning in objects beyond their obvious utility. Before we started our Artifact, we read several interesting articles in the preceding modules. We discovered how the popular board game Candy Land was actually invented in the polio wards for children. The seemingly non-strategic game of steps leading to destinations had the implicit aim of uplifting the spirits of children paralyzed by polio. We also read analytical articles on whether collections hold sentimental value, or are just the results of mindless hoarding.

Finally, for my artifact, I chose an object of sentimental value that also has an interesting connection with our nation.

Summary of the Artifact

Goals:

• Reflecting on the relationship between archives, objects and narratives
• Gathering and evaluating digital research for a multimodal project
• Introducing myself to web design

Arguments/Purpose:

• The purpose of my Object Narrative is as follows:
  1. Exploring the impact of the harmonium in our music
  2. Understanding the modifications of the instrument over time
• My arguments were distributed over three posts: 
  1. The harmonium's influence on my childhood - inculcating cultural values, facilitating socialization, better co-ordination capabilities, and an alternative to the lack of outdoor activities.
  2. The harmonium's birth in France and modification in Britain and the Indian sub-continent where it was modified as a portable instrument - a reason for its popularity.
  3. The harmonium's marked difference with instruments like veena and santoor, it's ban in the subcontinent during the mid 20th century, its reappearance as a traditional instrument in Bengali households
• I employed pathos for the first point as I wanted to leave a personal touch on the narrative. I used ethos for the next two points and cited references from a scholarly article and a history book. 

Audience:

My primary audience was my course instructor and classmates who I assumed would be fairly unfamiliar with the harmonium's context in South Asia. I composed my narrative accordingly, with proper introductions. 

Defining Features:

I made several design choices to make my website effective. The Home Page of my Website includes a picture of me, a short introduction of who I am and why I created this website.

Next I added a Post Carousel where the three main written entries are displayed in a clickable slide-show format on the backdrop of a picture. My aim was to make navigation around my website easy.

The next block included an image gallery.

At the footer, I attached hyperlinks for my posts once again, this time in a static format, so that the contents of the website are clearly displayed.

Within the posts, my strategy was to embed media elements directly as opposed to attaching hyperlinks that open in separate tabs. This was done in consideration of the viewer's comfort.

Revision:

I generated a logo for my project which I also chose as the thumbnail icon for the website. When the icon appears on the side of the tab, its contents are not very clear. So I would choose a simpler and more defined design as the thumbnail icon.

Click to view my first reflection of the project