At first, I thought that Strings was a boring piece of kinetic typography, and in some ways it is. “youandme,” and both “flirt” pieces are rather unimaginative in their usage of kinetics, but others I found much more interesting, such as “arms” and “poidog.” The reason I think “arms” is better than “youandme” is not a difference quantified in the addition of five letters, it’s a matter of shape and movement. “youandme” doesn’t take and risks and just has the two words zoning around the screen. I understand that the point of the piece was personifying the two parties, showing that “me” if trying to get close to “you” and is whizzing all over the place to do so, but fails. “you” is more shy and slow moving and unresponsive. That’s all fine and dandy, he achieved his goal of making me think of an arrangement of letter in terms of a story, but I felt nothing as a experienced it, which to me says that he failed in to larger picture.

“arms” succeeded as a piece of kinetic typography because it made me feel something in the absence of more complex words. “youandme” set the stage for this piece and set the expectation of what he would do with the starting “your,” but then took it a different direction and abandoned the use of words at all in favor of shapes. “your” turns into “arms” and then arms turns into a circle that moves and shifts, which is much more evocative than the wibbly-wobbly blandness of “youandme.” That circle turns into “me,” and the experience of the piece evokes a positive feeling of comfort without every using the words embrace, comfort, or home. Yet those are the thoughts and feelings I had, while in “youandme” I had to search and create some small semblance of meaning.

As for “poidog,” I’m not really sure what the significance of the title is, but I thought the interconnection of the words make his statement that “words are like strings that push & pull out of my mouth” more meaningful that my typed up, unmoving transcription. By making the words appear one at a time, it forces me to consider the mean of each one a lot more than I would reading it in fast sequence. This is a much more pulled together idea than “haha,” which also makes the viewer think about sound in a different way.