Drawing Voices

        The Drawing Voices text focuses on Stranger Comes To Town, an animation by Jaqueline Goss, who conducted interviews with a number of immigrants based on their experiences of the use of biometrics for identifying those entering the United States. While the interviews themselves are not particularly interesting, unlike many animated interviews, Goss chooses to leave in awkward speech patterns and stilted silences. She attributes this decision to the fact that a lot of a subjects energy and personality comes through their speech patterns. This gives her film more honesty than many other documentary interviews, as pauses and silences can be as effective in communicating as the most eloquent speech.

        Also unusual in Goss' animation is her choice to let the subjects design their own character avatar. Given completely free reign, Goss (and I to a lesser degree) was surprised that not a single subject chose to alter their own gender, although many chose to use non human characters.