In a movie, speed can make a film more action packed, and can sometimes even leave your audience behind if done improperly. Dakota is a Flash literary animation that uses speed, but with the purpose of locking in attention, even if the audience gets lost in the process. Immediately as you start the work, music begins to pick up with the background changing with the beat. Following that, a countdown begins, alternating between numeric and character representations of the numbers, hinting at the chaos to come. Soon after the countdown, the title appears, only to immediately descend into chaos as words start flashing on the screen at high rates of speed. Even if it feels fast at the start, the words flash faster and faster as you progress through the piece, matched with the music in the background. Large font and fast paced music and transitions leaves the audience overwhelmed as they try to piece together what is occurring, leaving no time to truly process the references or comparisons they made. It was difficult enough just to keep up with the actions that were taking place. In Speed Reading, Jessica Pressman goes into detail how Dakota is based off of The Cantos. In the beginning, it starts off mid sentence just like in The Cantos, but many parts of the poetry is mirrored in Dakota, but at such a high rate of speed, that it is impossible to appreciate the comparisons that were being made.
Because of the difficulty in close reading, the fast music, and rapid animation, it is hard to call this piece a traditional literary work, however, the focus on text also means it cannot be excluded from being a literary work. Therefore, it sits in this middle ground, not a film, and not a literary work. And yet, that is the benefit of electronic works, Dakota combines both the traditional work of playing off of previous pieces, and yet creatively puts it into a riveting electronic form that holds its audience’s attention.