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Like the film The Wizard of Oz, billyharveymusic.com makes believable several layers of reality. Once convinced by the tangible feel of Polaroids and masking tape on your computer screen, each new image leads you further down the rabbit hole to a reality of paper people going through daily life in a paper world. It makes you wonder in what reality does the photographer exist? Stone's layered worlds are so funny and entertaining, and the depth and richness of experience provides an undeniable attraction that lures one deeper towards increasing enjoyment.

Stone's use of video to bring to life otherwise inanimate objects relates strongly to the mid '90s work of video installation artist Tony Oursler (www.tonyoursler.com). Oursler projected video of talking faces onto the blank round heads of large, simply constructed dolls, as seen in works such as Self Portrait in Yellow, 1996. Stone's work does not have the psychological tension, haunting appearance, or aggressive voices that Oursler often used, and unlike Oursler, Stone is bound by the 2-dimentional surface of the computer monitor, but both artists superimpose video of real life people onto inanimate objects, breathing a captivating sense of life into the lifeless, and creating an interesting juxtaposition of the dead or static with the movement and sound of the living. Stone's use of this phenomenon is particularly appealing in that its motive is in the practical aspect of providing information and narrative to hold the site together, while remaining dominantly for the sake of humor and pure enjoyment.

Pushing beyond the boundaries of traditional video and film media, web designers now have a great ability to create powerful narrative, interactive, visual statements within their work, and like those other media, web design deserves to be judged as more than just a way to present information. With countless independent artists across the world exploring the medium and developing design—and now animation—concepts that will likely help shape the future of all digital media, web design needs to be taken more seriously and to be evaluated as a fine art. In this light, we must consider Jordan Stone's work as an unmistakable presence that gives new meaning and potential to the medium of Flash design and the future of web based entertainment.

Information based sites are useful to us on a daily basis, but do they enrich our lives? Can’t purely informative and seemingly boring websites be beautiful and entertaining if even in a simple manner? Web sites, unlike most other art (on a pedestal in a museum) are something we can interact with every day. With that potential to effect our daily lives, web sites, and the designers who create them, have the responsibility to uplift us, to enliven happiness and beauty in our own lives, and to inspire evolution. Jordan Stone does just that. "I would like to spread hope,' he says, "I would like creative people to get excited and go make something." In breaking the boundaries of traditional design and web content to push the medium to new heights, Jordan Stone's work creates a depth of experience that is innovative and inspiring not only to fellow designers, but to all who view and appreciate it.

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