Four Seasons of Haiku

Link to Work: Link
Age: 7 and up
Type: interactive website with poetry collection
Language: English/Japanese
Platform: Web/Browser

Mentor: Giovanna di Rosario

Mentees: Giorgia Zani, Matteo Flaminio, Tommaso Schifano, Anna Dognini, Riccardo Brosio

Roles & Additional Authors: programmer: matteo flaminio, co-programmer: tommaso schifano, illustrators: Giorgia Zani, Anna Dognini, copy: Riccardo Brosio

Short Description: an interactive collection of haikus, representing different seasons and Japanese traditions.

Longer Description: This project focuses on the Haiku, a poetic form consisting in 17 morae (sound units), arranged in three lines. This kind of composition became very popular in Japan around the 17th century and still remains today as a unique form of art, able to express much and suggest many things in the fewest possible words. Each Haiku contains a seasonal reference, the so called kigo 季語. This is a hint that suggests the time of the year in which it was composed or to which it refers in general, it can be related to the weather, an animal or a plant or an object of the Japanese tradition. To represent this link between Haiku and seasons, we created an interactive website that gathers 16 haiku from various important authors (such as Basho, Issa and Buson), divided according to the season they are referring to. At the center can be seen an illustration of an imaginary Japanese landscape, with a small village and rice fields nearby. Below the picture, a timeline allows the user to move between the seasons: as you move the cursor, the scenery slightly changes according to the time of the year and a new illustration enters in the scene. By passing over every new element you will discover an hidden haiku, reported in Japanese alphabet and its English translation. If you click on the element the window on the right will expand revealing another curiosity about the poem, an object or a Japanese tradition. You can also click on the icon near the poem to hear it recited in Japanese. 

Mentoring Context: Created in a course on digital literature taught by Giovanna di Rosario in Digital Culture at Politecnico di Milano.

Bios: We are a group of five students, attending a Master Degree in Communication Design at Politecnico di Milano. We are fascinated by japanese tradition, for this reason we tried to capture in an engaging way its peculiarities, developing a journey through various haiku and a graphical representation for each one.