Christine DeRienzo
CECS 5300
Spring 2012
Investigative Activity #5
I am Trying to Believe
At first glance, I was not exactly sure what this website was all about. The problem is trying to interpret what the site is trying to say. The words are all blurry and the screen is jumbled. In researching a bit further, I found that this was a record promotion for the band Nine Inch Nails. They hid the message “I am trying to believe” on t-shirts and promotions for their 2007 album. The site itself is showing what will happen if you were to ingest “Parepin”. Although Parepin itself is not real, or at least I don’t believe it is, the message that the band was trying to portray was a political message of how unsuspecting we would be if the government, or terrorists, were trying to infiltrate our water supply.
If you really think about the message, it is a very scary one. How easy would it be for something like Parepin to be put into our water supply without us even knowing it? In order to read the words on the screen, you need to highlight them and then they all become clear. As soon as highlighting is clicked off, the words jumble again. I interpreted this to be what the site would look like to someone who had taken Parepin (words jumbled) and someone who had not (words not jumbled).
For people who are fans of the band Nine Inch Nails, they know there are a lot of hidden messages in their music. This website just took that a bit further by providing a visual of what they were trying to portray. I found it very interesting and a bit un-nerving at the same time.
