VIRTUAL BISTIBADLANDS
by Michelle Bienias
Step into a little-known planet, 70 million years old and just over 6 square miles in size, located in northwestern New Mexico. This post-apocalyptic landscape, known as the Bisti Badlands, is a designated wilderness area containing a profusion of natural rock formations called ‘hoodoos’. Hoodoos are vertical protrusions created when differential erosion wears down soft rock more quickly than the neighboring hard rock, creating a tableau of mushroom, phallic and Stonehenge shapes begging for imaginative names, like the Egg Factory and Thing Island. Hoodoos are very fragile and continually changing as the existing sculpted rock erodes and reveals new formations; thus the importance of capturing this area, not only as a record of a point in time, but also as a service to the millions of people who will never travel here in any other manner.
This Flash site is an outstanding example of user-friendliness. In fact, the clean design and ubiquitous Help menus render it idiot-proof. VRs rotate automatically upon download and it’s easy to figure out how to stop and turn them, but just in case, there’s also a drop-down help menu. In fact, each section of the site contains a little help window and each of the over 40 VRs is also available in Quicktime, with a drop-down window explaining the pros and cons of this media format. All the QTVRs are also organized within a section called ‘Poster’ on the dropdown Quicktime menu.
The site also features an interactive state map with directions and movable scales for measuring distance and a navigation map of the badlands, including walking distances to various points within the park, reference points and points of interest. Be sure to visit the Rock Shop, where a selection of Badlands rocks and petrified wood are available in object tours. Kudos go to Dave Krick, also of jux2position.com!
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