Untravel's founder, Michael Epstein was invited to speak on the"Film Forward" panel at the True/False film festival in Columbia, Missouri last week. The crowd (including Untravel's own Laura Piraino) reported that it was "really good." The panel looked at ways that audiences and filmmakers are getting more participatory in their films through new platforms and theatrical techniques.
No video of the panel yet but Michael got a chance to show a trailer for "Walking Cinema" and argue with Punchdrunk/BBC Journalist Adam Curtis about rampant individualism and action-producing media. Also on the panel was The Weather Underground director Sam Green and the kids behind New Left Media. It was an honor to be there and thanks to David Wilson for making it happen.
I often journey deep into the countryside and ancient mounds in search of powerful mobile storytelling. I was pretty excited by this guide developed in 2008 for America's largest archeological site, Cahokia Mounds, a 20,000 soul Mississippian community at its apex in 1000AD. They worshiped the sun and left behind a swath of sacred mounds 20 miles east of St. Louis in Illinois. Recently, there has been a series of Indiana-Jones-like explorations of the site, using cosmology and advanced geometry to determine how the mounds are laid out along an ancient, sacred blueprint. Wow!
The mobile guide, unfortunately, was really, really far from wow. Flute music and emasculated voiceover espoused dimensions and dates. Yet within this litany of facts, I found a pretty good one: the "Center" of this sun city lay on a corner of the highest mound, at the apex of two isosceles triangles (see drawing below.) Standing on this ancient apex you look west and see the mirage of the St. Louis skyline, with its 1965, 630-foot high arch--itself a series of powerful triangles. The arch circumscribes an isosceles triangle (see below). The horizontal slices of steel that make up the arch are equilateral triangles and those at the pinnacle of the arch contain observation windows, which face Cahokia mounds.
Above: iTouch Video/Audio Tour of Cahokia (Schwartz Associates)
In my kind of Unibomber diagram below you see what I think is the most interesting site at Cahokia: the view to the observation deck at the top of the St. Louis arch where someone at the apex of a steel-girded isosceles triangle looks out at you at the apex of a 1000 year-old, sun-worshiping isosceles triangle. Both of these observers happen to be standing in the midst of precise calculations which reach towards something mystical: America's manifest destiny and the Cahokia Indians' sun god.
The artist rendering above describes 3 triangles that converge on the largest archeological site in the US. In Cahokia, IL (drawn image to the right) there is a 100ft mound, whose lower shelf was actually the center of this MIssissipian community. We know this because other prominent mounds form isosceles triangles with this point. From this center point, on a clear day, one can gaze 20 miles into the distance (see photograph above) and see downtown St. Louis with its Gateway Arch. And at the apex of that isosceles triangle another observer sees you (unwittingly). Both triangles reach for something higher--the sun and American expansionism. And both these targets can burn you something awful if you get too close.
MIX OF "AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL" AND BLUE REACTION TO GARAGE-TOP VISTA:
Just below the sidewalk on JFK St. in Harvard Square is a little elevator button that points 'up."
And at the top of this elevator is a flight of stairs. And at the top of these stairs is a vista over pristine steeples and S-shaped river. During a late-October sunset in 2007, I contemplated this vista with "Brother Blue". Two years later he passed on at the age of 88. He conjured up Ray Charles for us, and I think he got it all right: the song, the setting, the nation, and his self. Keep calling us from the mountain, Blue.
Brother Blue in the Cambridge Burying Ground, 2007
View from on top of the Harvard Square Garage.
That elevator button under the JFK street sidewalk.
Lately I've been playing a game with the paper version of the "Sunday Times". I take the 8-10 sections out of their blue sleeve and try as quickly as possible to fine "THE" article. That one article that completely satiates something I've been thinking about on/off for possibly my entire life. This week it was "Stereo for One: A Brief Unaccompanied Tradition."
30 years ago the Walkman hit the streets, and the author in this article reflects on how this public headphone invasion still creates "solitary islands of disengagement" and "we are stuck in pause, still listening to glorious Pavarotti, but also blocking out the aural serendiptity of out existence--the chance conversations, the songbird trills, even the bleats of car horns."
Even though we aren't doing mobile music, we struggle with the isolating effect of our tours because they just demand headphones. Sure it's is our aim to make stuff that blends, enhances, and gets you more into your surroundings, but the headphones cut you off from stuff and even when they don't they might repel potential conversations because of the "i'm in my own world" attitude they carry.
While this really flies in the face of our "insider", "senstive" vision for Untravel Media, I do think we can override the negative effects. If we make media that might have certain breaks built in, to take off headphones and chat more (as our fades to black in "Blue Impact" are supposed to) and make media which is designed to fit into a continuum experience of headphone off/on (as with our bike tours concept) travelers will be taken deeper into a place without overly filtering out the outside world.
Was doing my obligatory read of the Wired Mystery issue hosted by J.J. Abrams (creator of "Lost", "Alias", and several blockbuster films including "Startrek" the prequel.) In that issue was this 1-pager on ambigrams, words that can be read right-side up and upside-down. Like this one below.
Hmmm, ambigrams could be great for street signage, especially below your feet. Webster/Parkman? We're on it!
The paper summarizes Untravel's concept of mapped storytelling known as "Terratives." Epstein will be comparing four very different terratives in his presentation, emphasizing how character, story arc, in situ action, and social impact can be developed.
Media in Transition is an international biannual conference that brings together a range of academic and industry folk who want to take a step back and think about how media is changing. This conference is titled "Stone and Papyrus" and looks at the concepts of durable vs. portable media. Topics examine the blurring and the exaggeration of these concepts in our current times.
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