Ask Me for the Moon: Working Nights in Waikiki

Brief poem presented as text slowly moving on the screen, accompanied by a white skyline of Waikiki on a black screen. Later, moon-blue images of hotel signs invite clicks that bring forth further reflections on the nighttime work of those who tend the tourists.

Editorial statement from Electronic Literature Collection:

John David Zuern’s Ask Me For the Moon is a digital poem created in Adobe Flash using juxtaposed images, words, and sounds, to create the feeling of the labor behind the scenes at a Hawaii resort.

The images and colors (black, white, and turquoise dominate) paint a picture of Waikiki that is emphasized in Zuern’s notes on the piece, which observe that at the time the piece was made there was approximately one worker for every two and a half visitors to Waikiki. The text of the piece plays over the faded gray landscape of the island, while the moving pictures depict fragments of labor moving through like waves along the shore.

The visual poetics serve as a poignant reminder of how much work is done at night, out of sight of the tourists who swarm the island.