Analyzing "Blue Velvet"

"Blue Velvet: Re-dressing New Orleans in Katrina's wake" explores in every direction the complicated set up of New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.  The way the project is set up is nonlinear, combining music, maps, and an array of information shown through a display of words breaking apart and combing with new words taking you deeper into new realms of information.  It is important how complex and nonlinear this project is shown to us because the authors want to convey a mood of chaos and darkness to the reader, showing the growing rates of structural racism in New Orleans as well as how the tragic events that took place could be traced back to neo-liberal practices in the United States. 
The authors of this piece hoped that people would leave with a better understanding of what is happening in New Orleans, as well as leave with a dark mood, a sense of shock at how America works and what was at stake for New Orleans.  The fact that words like melancholic and neoconservative fall from the top of the screen suggest the sad state that New Orleans has fallen into.  The dark gray background and floating words on the waves seen on the main page suggest a dark mood and the haunting of Hurricane Katrina.   Charts on the Bush tax cuts and percentages of the social class of Hurricane Katrina victims drift by, evoking a haunting message as well as a scholarly view of struggle in New Orleans. 
A traditional approach to this outline of life in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina would not be as beneficial as a nonlinear, more chaotic approach because a nonlinear approach serves as metaphorical and more interesting than just words on paper without movement and music.  For example, the structural racism in New Orleans seems to come in and out of view, mostly hidden by the news just as words seem to disappear on the screen.  Words and charts flow by to give a visualization of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. 
The most intriguing parts of this work were the falling and disappearing words, as well as the nonlinear path that the information takes.  I could be exploring the project all day, finding new realms of information at each click and turn.  The drifting charts make the information more scholarly and real rather than claimed evidence in rhetoric.   The moving background with various shades of green and blue capture a sense of motion on water very well.  The whole presentation captures your eye with words falling and drifting every which way.  In my own work I would like to capture the eye with various motion techniques as well as invisible words that pop out after being within sight of the computer mouse.