So in our never-ending search for good location-based stories, I have always thought that mobile tours of “sites of conscience” would be apropos.“Conscience” is bit guilt-laden for me, maybe sites of scrutiny?Anyway, I do think travelers are interested in “justice,” even if it’s sandwiched between shopping and bar hopping.Hey, the Alcatraz mobile guide made Antenna Audio happen, and for two decades it’s been an attraction in and of itself, where else can you really begin to feel what solitary confinement is like?
Concentration camps, battlegrounds, firebombed Dresden, etc. are all places where calamitous things happened, and the markers, plaques, statues, and monuments do little to tell the story of those tragedies.Mobile stories then become an excellent medium to juxtapose historic video, images, and voices with an otherwise nondescript landscape of pain.
So that all makes perfect sense, but on a recent trip to Italy I discovered an interesting offshoot of this idea, a more subtle sister to “sites of conscience.”Our constructed “happy places,” over time, can become sites of horror in how they reveal delusions, fakes, and pomp of societies.Scanned carefully, our parks, zoos, and recreation areas can speak volumes to what went wrong, especially when these places have lost their cheer.
And on a recent early morning jog in Genova, I stumbled upon such a place, a villa-cum-zoo-cum-greenspace-cum-museum space called Villetta di Negro, just that name is already freaky and dark.So too are the DeCordova’s, Laumeiers, and other phat land grants that bear the incongruous names of their givers.
DiNegro was a 19th century Genovese noble who must have had THE pad in Genova, perched on a hill overlooking the port and the peons, it was known as a “Pacific Refuge (It. Asilo) for the Muses.”It’s where he entertained Dickens, Washington, and a stream of beloved botanists. Shortly after his death, in 1863, the city acquired the Asilo, trying to bring a piece of paradise to the locals, who were rapidly being sucked into the fledgling Republic of Italy.This magnificent topographical protrusion went through a lot over the next 145 years, trying its best to play the part of paradise through allied bombardments, natural history museums, and onslaughts of bored youth and graffiti artists.What remains is an overgrown home to Di Negro’s many plant species and a 1950’s concrete construct to house the OrientalArt museum.All of these old plants and priceless vases sit there desperately trying to hold up their exotic chins in the face of decay.I think it’s a wild little park, and its artifacts are testament to how Italians and many Western cultures have prided themselves on international connections, which in our “glocal” age seem strikingly…quaint.A few details:
Image of the Waterfall and Collateral "Falsie" Hovel, Villetta di Negro, Genova
The first thing you notice as you begin to wind up the park’s steep lacings of asphalt is the multi-level waterfall cascading over those fossilized rocks, yeah, those ones that are amazingly bumpy and craggy, like in a…ZOO.In fact, one of the early 20th Century incarnations of this jewel over Genova was as a zoo.There are still two screened in grottos built into the sides of the upper level of the waterfall which used to be bird cages.The workers now store sacks of cement and such in them.
To the left of waterfall, the joy ride continues through a series of hovels, which I can only liken to the Swiss Family Robinson exhibit at Disney World.You can see one of them in the photo here and they are encircled in catwalks and fake wood railings, which on closer inspection reveal cracking stucco over rusting steel rods.When I was poking around this Gilligan housing development I noticed numbers on the doors.Do people live here?Might this be the caretakers residence or even private condos?
Peering through stained, shaded windows in the early morning light, I found the interiors to be surprisingly clean, with possibly a mattress or two on the floor.I was fascinated and began to envision a radio show featuring reports each week from caretakers of fallen parks and fallow amusement zones.This mishmash of neglected plants from a long-dead Count/horticulturalist, abandoned zoo, and now strange homes mixed in there made the place exotic in its baggage, more than its treasures.
In some ways the “fakies” and castaway fantasy of Di Negro park are much more “real” Italy than what the Uffizi or Colosseum can show you.The fantasy of escaping Italy must have been strong through the trying years before and after WWII.An island adventure, steeling a kiss in the grotto under the waterfall, looking out over the musty port at sunset from under the Villa.Many Italians got to play out their fantasy’s here and in its confused decay we might see how that fantasy is no longer relevant in a country where you just up and move if the place doesn’t seem to hold much for you.
In October I had the pleasure of doing a phone interview with the creators of "Towle's Hill" a monlogue produced by San Francisco's Marsh Theater and Gundlach Bundschu, a winery in Sonoma Valley, CA. On the phone was the show's director and artist in residence at the Marsh, David Ford, the writer and performer, Mark Kenwood, and the Marsh's artistic director and founder, Stephanie Weisman.
Poster for Towle's Hill performance at Gundlach Bundschu winery, Marsh Theater, and around the country in 2008.
"Towles Hill”, as most of the Marsh’s productions, is a live monologue performed in an intimate settings. "Towle's" let even more barriers down by featuring a healthy wine tasting after the show (and sometimes beforehand, too.)I saw the show on the Marsh's SF stage in August, after it had traveled to 10 cities on a rock n' roll bus and had a lovely show on at the winery itself. From what I understand, Gundlach wanted to do something in the arts to celebrate its 25th anniversary and saw a traveling performance of its history as a funky way to spread their brand, do honor to their tradition, and get the attention of their reps, distributors, and colleagues. Untravel is considering doing wine and food tours and this combination of history, entertaiment, and site-based storytelling is a good lesson for us.
David is a clear-headed monologue master, who told me his initial instinct with this project, as with most performances, was to pinpoint something in the Gunlach history that could create stakes for the performance. Him and Mark discovered in long talks with the Bundschu family, that grandfather Towle Bundschu had been very close to selling off the winery in the 1970’s.
From this moment of high stakes, the history then flows out naturally from a worried mind and a decision hangs heavy over the rest of the performance. Unlike most mobile narratives we have taken and worked on, this idea of something personal at stake driving the recounting of history is compelling.
The other key ingredient was finding a way to portray Towle who has been dead for over 20 years. Luckily, as Mark explained to me, Towles son, Jeff, was like a mini-Towle:
And besides lenghty interviews and research into family albums (and drinking songs!) Mark and David found that touring the winery itself, elicited great, and even forgotten family tales, one of which became central to pulling the audience closer to this wine-making family.
I love when interviewees conspire with space to tell you something, on site, in the moment that they are just realizing, almost chaneling the ground beneath their feet. It happened one time with tha post-Katrina interview of a man who only realized 6 months after the story how improbable his path was through floodwaters to find a canoe he ended up rescuing 30 people with.Overall, Stephanie felt that this story of a wine-making family really tapped strongly into a California ethos of up-and-downs, family bonds, and magic in the soil.
“TH” is a great starting point for thinking about wine country tours. Family history is often the key thread to understanding winemakers' various approaches and relationship to the land. What stays in my mind about Towle's Hill and my own winery jaunt in Sonoma was how x-$Billion CA business came from some down home 70's funkiness. Spinning out from the 60's there was a generation that understood the value of experimention, the independence of farm life, and, possibly, the love of inebriation. How cool would it be to go back to the topsy-turvey Sonoma of the 70's through mobile media stories available in tasting rooms, on bike routes through fields, and through talks with some of the holdout nuts from the era? It could even be kind of underground, through small signs in tasting rooms that are tiny portals to this story thread. Maybe, for an instance, it let us all take a step back from the rules, elitism, and tasting fees Sonoma presents to the public, and take us to the tumble down wineries of the uncertain 70's...
Our M@Harvard Team (Laura Piraino, Eric Stange, Michael Epstein, and Steven Schirra) met two weeks ago and covered some of the potential spots on the tour (MGH Etherdome with its mini-museum and stairway pic of ‘ole MedicalCollege on pilings, Walnut and Beacon St. Parkman houses, cute antique stores, etc.)We then let this genus loci simmer within us over Upper Crust pizza on Charles St. A couple of ideas emerged about scripting a fictional character or interviewing the great-great grandson of Parkman, now a Cambridge teenager.The first seemed hokie and the second a role of the dice.We left the meeting a bit upper crestfallen.
Last week we had a mini-breakthrough: toys.For a while I’ve felt our tour content could be more fun, even funny, but I tend to loathe street-based games (Big Games, Alternate Reality Games, augmented reality, gag!)Murder at Harvard might not have been a comedy waiting to happen, but if you watch the film there is a powerful sense of delight in the interviewees, especially Schama.He is literally toying around with numerous facts and fancying conversations to give him the murder’s history in full relief.
Thanks to Steven’s work with feux captivity narratives and Ed Barrett’s prescient comments about surprise being essential to narrative constructs, we began to tease out a storyline based on the history of toys and games around gruesome historical events.The idea has 3 core parts:
*Build replicas of historic toys, games, and cartoons around the Parkman case and plant them in sites around Beacon Hill and MGH.These “toys” could include broadside ballads, zoetropes, board games, and cartoons.
*Develop mobile content:that guides audiences to these sites and narrates toys.
*Find local shops and organizations willing to house these artifacts.
Both the toys and the mobile content will go beyond our “on the nose” explanations of history and place we have used in previous tours.We hope the toys actually reveal key events and aspects that made the Parkman murder such a draw for “folk” and Brahmin alike.We also hope to reveal how play is both a folk and an academic practice in explaining scandals and disasters.
A concern is that the NEH is looking for a replicable platform from the project.Something that can be used by filmmakers going forward to engage students, travelers, and locals with the humanities.Building toys might be to “one-off” and not the type of activity they wish to support.A couple of responses come to mind.First, filmmakers often have props on hand that would be great to plant in geographies to re-experience the film first-hand.Secondly, I can see how this “serious toys” project might really engage high school kids who just aren’t that interested in local history.
Our next steps are to set up a focus group with the Beacon Hill Business Association to see if this idea has appeal to some shop owners.I have contacted the Beacon Hill Times about writing an article about the project.We should also meet with MGH and Liberty Hotel to see if they can get involved in the project.
Laura is hunting down history on toys and Steven is trying to interview particular academics about crime stories and toys.We are curious to hear your reactions to this…
In November 2008, Untravel Media launched their latest project, a mobile guide for the Adobe MAX Conference in San Francisco, CA. The guide features Adobe's latest mobile technology, the Distributable Player Application. This software allows the installation of Flash Lite 3.0 on a wide range of mobile phones. View and download the mobile guide for your phone!
CEO Michael Epstein also partcipated in the Mobile Fast Pitch Networking event at the end of the MAX conference, where great minds in Flash Lite technology shared their entrepreneurial visions for the future of mobile.
Hey, I had a good chat yesterday with Ken Freedman, the station manager at WFMU in New Jersey and now the director (minister?) of the Free Music Archive (www.freemusicarchive.org). We have some kindred ideas about the web 2.0 lovefest, especially the value of the media sharing involved. Movements such as "Creative Commons" have freed up some media elements for public use, but the requirement that the music have a single author means a ton of free laptop-digital-music-produced-on-my-little-midi-app-in-my-basement type music.
His project, the Free Music Archive, takes advantage of the fact that many college and public radio stations are curating great music and some even have ownership of master copies of live performances at the stations. Through a "Web 1.5" approach, Ken plans to put up a ton of free music that has actually been curated by the radio community, featuring live performances by compelling bands. Songs can be reused for free in non-profit/educational works or in commercial works with the owner's permission. The project is due to launch December 15th.
In Untravel's own work with place-based storytelling, such an approach of getting great images, sounds, and stories from particular places through communities that are close to those places and have ownership over the content is very compelling. Especially if that content can be reused in others' not-for-profit pieces. Some communities that come to mind: tour guides, journalists, and filmmakers. We'll see how we can start baking that into our platform development.
A month into the production process we begin to think about voicing. Based on the approach of the film _Murder at Harvard_ , I see three kinds of voices available:
1. Actors: as with the movie, we might use actors' voices to put us inside especially pregnant moments in the murder chronology. Actors can also give the piece a younger, more hip sound.
2. Narrator: similar to an actor, a narrator allows us to easily set up the interviews or other key moments in the story. In the film, Simon Schama is the narration of the piece, but for this mobile story, it is doubtful he will be available for full voicing of the narration.
3. Interviews: the film has a wealth of interviews that reveal the various angles and complexities fo the Parkman murder case. Further interviews with experts on the particular places in the mobile version may be added.
OK, so what? How do we begin to figure out these voices? Again, the landscape might be helpful, especially some small details from the walk I did in the MGH/Beacon Hill neighborhood a couple of weeks ago. Here are two "evocative spaces" that jump out at me and what voices they inspire. First on center stagein the etherdome is this painting, which I call "The Wound."
Wow, what a great shot! (no pun). I see a couple key things in this painting. One is the idea that medicine was almost a gentlemen's parlor game in the mid-nineteenth century. These are upper class "modest witnesses" of the sugerical procedure. As you stand in this amphitheater, now surrounded by a multi-billion-dollar world-renowned medical cluster, the humble-ness of this photo recalls Brahmin doctors, who were not so sullied in business affairs. The money collector could only skirt this fascinating discovery process as he made his rounds past the Harvard Medical College in Parkman's time. I'm beginning to hear a voice of medicine today, still figuring out where fascination stops and financial interests begin.
As I continued my walk down Charles Street I came accross this delightful store with a picture window of doorknobs.
Wow, again. What a plethora of objects. It makes you consider how graceful every adornment in Beacon Hill must be and has just a inkling of that locked privvy door. My only thought here was that there might be an opportunity to plant a door knob with fingerprints on it or some bit of forensic evidence used in the trial in this window and invite audiences to listen outside this shop window and discover this evocative object. In fact, if w use voice dial in phone numbers to deliver the content, such shop windows may be invaluable in bringing the public into the story through a well-placed announcement for the tour and the dial in number.
This talk of planted door knobs and paintings as props brings us back to Eric's concern of losing depth in the mobile production. We could easily get kitchy with all this. Yet visual environments, properly read and sparking participant actions can reach a poetic density to rival the tenets of a researched, meticulously designed film.
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