The Season We Texted

Audiovisual Essay

Critical Reflection

My story, The Season We Texted, originated from an experience of my own first love. When I first started making it, I merely intended to tell a personal memory through hand-drawing. However, as I delved deeper into the production process, I gradually realized that this work reflects far more than just the experiences of an emotional story itself, but reveals a more general emotional topic - When intimate relationships are mainly conducted through online information, misunderstandings, waiting and emotional dependence in communication will be magnified, thereby having a profound impact on self-worth and identity recognition.

Although in my story, the two characters were forced to communicate online because they were not in the same school. With the development of the digital age, people do indeed increasingly rely on instant messaging, social software and other media to maintain close connections. This “always online” state may not only strengthen emotional connections but also lead to the coexistence of dependence and anxiety. My creative experience has confirmed this: in this intimate relationship, I gradually entrusted my emotions to the other person's response time, tone, and the presence or absence of information, and these are increasingly decisive for understanding the subtle differences in emotional states. As Khan et al. (2025) pointed out, digital communication can serve as a source of intimacy, but it may also lead to estrangement or an amplification of emotional distance. Although this dual role is not particularly emphasised in my works, it is still very worthy of attention and reflection. Overall, this process made me realise that digital intimacy is not the root cause of the problem, but it can indeed enhance the experience during the emotional stage.

When deciding upon the visual presentation technique, I ruled out the option of casting actors to re-enact the story. For me, this particular personal experience is one whose delicate and nuanced emotions would be exceedingly difficult to convey through re-enactment with my current skill level. But this first love experience happened seven years ago, and I don't have enough genuine records to recreate the story. Just then, I drew inspiration from the student work The Cursed Cage on Minerva, which also adopts a minimalist hand-drawn style, and discovered that a small number of simple visual elements can also carry rich emotions through collage and editing, and present personal feelings in a more resonant form. In my work, the emotional changes at different stages, the superimposition of chat interfaces, the contrast of colours, etc., are all aimed at expressing how emotions are shaped imperceptibly by the feedback from the other party in digital communication scenarios. Among them, by taking the mobile phone interface as the main narrative thread, I gradually realised that the interface itself is not only a container for carrying content, but also a part of the narrative. As Manovich(2001) pointed out, the language of new media is often hidden in the interface structure and presentation methods.

During the production process, I also encountered challenges in terms of technology and expression. For instance, in order to maintain the overall harmony of the work's style, I used a single background music for all scenes. Although this unified the tone, it also weakened the contrast between the emotional climax and the lowest point. As Pearlman (2013) proposed, rhythm is a “perceived emotional structure”, but my handling of rhythm in this work is still rather conservative. Besides, due to my health condition at that time, I was unable to record the narration and couldn't find a suitable voice actor. Therefore, I could only rely on subtitles to present the text. This, to some extent, distracts the audience when they are simultaneously focusing on the screen and the subtitles. All of these have, to a certain extent, affected the ideal quality of experience in the work.

Reflecting on the entire project, I realised that digital narrative is not only about “what to tell”, but more about “how to tell it”. As Ryan (2004) proposed, the meaning of a story is often embedded in the way the medium itself is expressed. Factors such as the content of the narrative, media structure, rhythm, sound selection, and visual blank space jointly shape the audience's perception and understanding of emotions. Especially when dealing with the theme of digital intimate relationships, how to strike a balance between text and visuals, as well as between reality and projection, remains a question that I still need to continuously explore. Besides, this project also holds a special significance for me - it has enabled me to re-examine that long-gone emotional memory many years later. Looking back at the previous story from my current perspective, I have new insights - I no longer return to sadness over the loss of a relationship, but rather I am glad that I have finally found myself. This also made me understand more profoundly that taking personal experiences seriously and transforming them into visual narratives is not only about organising one's own emotions, but also about providing the possibility of resonance and reflection for others. After all, almost everyone has a first love and may have buried deep in their hearts. I also came to realise that in the intimate relationships of the digital age, people are not only maintaining each other but also constantly shaping and reconstructing their "selves".