Storytelling

Though there are many things to consider when coming up with this idea that I feel will be a fun and serious project in different respects. Community, Networking, and Storytelling I feel are the main components. I want to focus this post about the storytelling aspect because I feel like it is really the meat and bones of the project.



When I first came up with this idea, I thought a lot about my own experiences. In most ways the first time I thought of this project was the Summer after my first year in college. i was thinking about projects to do for 206 because I am lame and do NMD in summer too. I envisions a crayon map of my hometown where all the places I lived in the town were highlighted (roughly 12 places), and different layers of stories were flowing off the screen. This really sparked my interest of the network of places where I have lived. I feel like there are common themes in the places I myself have lived such as the fact that I always had a cat. I envisioned the how the places i lived linked besides me, and also how those stories link with the people living there now. As part of my capstone, hopefully since I feel like I know basically what I want to do, after I get a sense of what I need, I can start, and then have the website component of the whole thing, and i was also thinking about doing part of an installation of the places I have lived...or maybe even the dorms, so that people can really see that this is going to be about who we are as a society and who we are as people not just facebook profiles.

Storytelling has a lot of important aspects, sites like the fray really innovate the way we tell stories, so i don't want to limit it to blog like postings, I want to feel that people can do what they want to tell their own stories, videos, pictures, text, other things.

I think the fray is a great example of the way stories are told that involve other people. There is a story told in some way or form then people can post their reactions or similar stories to this. The setup I believe is great, and my project shouldn't limit a little white canvas, if people can play around with the map they should be able to feel like posting is a creative process also.

In conclusion, I feel like my own part in this project (all the way back from crayon maps) to the other things I feel are important such as the maps networks and community will pull together for a very successful project, which is part of the reason I want this to break out beyond the walls of the net, and maybe do an installation portion. I also just had the idea of doing an analog project along with it, taking sidewalk chalk and drawing memories wherever, which may be illegal in some parts, but just some preliminary thoughts.