- More mystery if you want myth. The beginning is too detailed. Green Camp should be written as a utopia (which has no location). It should be a mysterious heaven. -- Part of this should be Green Camp has a magical panacea to Cooper's problems... "If we never sold Green Camp, we would be okay"
- Or focus intently on what exactly the memory is. No speculation, no research, just what the memory says (this seems like a different project, then. I would have to scrap everything that uses Google Maps) -- Include memories/testimonials from alumni, but sense half of what they're saying or something. Something visual that obscures Green Camp because Green Camp cannot be imaged.
- "These places were so great, you'll never understand" → "nostalgia" -- "So fragmented and ridiculous to talk this way, so the format makes sense to match it" I.e. that narrative structure can be interrupted
- Lead to dead-ends and speculations more. The whole document needs to be bigger, a bigger web
- Formally emphasize the inaccessibility of Green Camp -- Not important to have a photo of it, you should find ways to formally block out the appearance
- Give the user a number of options to decided if it's good whether or not Green Camp is now Green RCH -- Contradict points using tangents
- Explore the relations between the prison-industrial complex and the art education industrial complex -- That this "upper middle class" juvenile detention center takes money to "rehabilitate" and introduce art at a young age so that the youth can go to spend money at art school. This seems far-fetched now, but it made sense during the tutorial. I must be missing something. -- Do these two industries support each other? Does the education-industrial complex disenfranchise people and perpetuate circumstances that feed the prison-industrial complex (e.g. ghettos, racism, public resources)? --- "Tuition is racist" -- Word play on "camp" → camp as a recreational space, camp as a prison --- Present day: the actual Green Camp (or the remnants of it) is a prison, Green Camp as a memory is also a prison (cannot enter or exit at will, product of an industrial complex) -- Also that prisons cannot be imaged, like how Green Camp cannot be imaged because it cannot be reached --- Once we discover Green Camp is a juvenile correction home, the imagery should change. It should be formally clear that we are not allow to enter the space, to image it. The can be achieved in a few ways ---- Blocking or censoring photos you've taken ---- Photographing at the boundary of where you can take photos ---- Relying on imagery they provide (very little, but that could be good to keep repeating the same photo) ---- Stock imagery ---- Third party imaging (e.g. Google Maps)
- Quotes and sources—no attributions. Where are they coming from? Are you making them up? This is unclear -- I'm okay with this. I like it being a play of memory, deciphering fact and fiction. To me, this is good.
- Direction arrows are just slightly too small and hard to see.
- Trim out search bar on map that reveals ringwood location -- On second thought, there should be no explicit location until Green RCH is revealed. Green Camp should not be pinned to a location. This means rewriting the setup a bit. Instead of saying "With a physical location" perhaps the story can take on more of an odyssey type search. The "Then we found this" slide can come when it says we are driving and searching.
- the type doesn't feel official. In fact it feels more childlike, like it's a children's story. Whether or not this is good is unclear. I don't want it to read like a children's book, but I do want it to almost seem like fiction.
- Swearing seems... immature and gratuitous. Take it out.
- Esprit de Corps slide should be a tangent off of the "Green RCH info" slide
- How will this be presented? Why show every slide? It ruins the point of the format: to be free from an imposed duration. It's almost like it shouldn't be presented at all. -- Maybe it can be sent to the class before we meet so every knows they can view it before or they should bring a computer to class. -- Then during the presentation, I can either sit in silence and encourage questions and comments as they arise. A short Q/A could happen before, too. -- Or offer up my computer on the beamer to anyone who doesn't have a computer -- Present (and read aloud) a route through the powerpoint that I want to show. This option would allow me to focus on sections that I currently considering more. The trouble is, though, that my reading could distract those who want to go their own way. This is not a purist solution, but it maybe more of a "presentation".
- Speculation and mysticism; past/present/future; expectation/fantasy/realization
- When we first discovered Green RCH, the emotion felt was not outrage—and that's important. It was extreme caution and practically panic. We thought, "Who are we to go here? What is our actual attachment? Why do we deserve to connect with this place, to think we have a connection?" Before then, it was a desire to realize the myth of the place, to engage it. We didn't think we could reclaim it, but we at least wanted to close the book. -- Was it defeat we felt? We sat in silence and wrote. -- It wasn't defeat. We went to find out what Green Camp actually was, and we were surprised at the answer. We didn't lose. At most, we were barred access from indulging in it. -- And that's sort of what the piece is about. The whole thing is meant to be a metaphor for artistic/activist endeavors: reaching, having your target moved out of reach, and navigating obstacles. "That's life": a struggle of navigating restrictions. -- What could make this more interesting though is establishing a point at which you admit defeat. Liesel talked about how students often don't know when to realize their movement has failed. I had intended for this piece to go on indefinitely, acting as a journal during the Cooper struggle or during my education, but perhaps it could be more sobering to have a definitive "end": a point at which I say, that's enough, the book is closed for now.
- It feels forced to make it about relations between the prison industrial complex and the education industrial complex. It especially feels forced to end on that note. It's an interesting topic, and this is probably a really good example, but I'm not sure it's worth anything more than a speculation. Having done research (admittedly, minimal research), it is not a fruitful connection. If anything, there should maybe be short rant or speculation about how these two relate.
- So. Where to now? Where does it end? Is this an interactive archive of a journey in progress? Bleh, that bores me. Never-ending archive is so late 20th century. This is perhaps an archive, but it's blatantly subjective and curated. It's aware that it is limited, and it ends (or at least, I will make it end).
- "Having nostalgia for a place that you have a questionable connection to"
- Possible speculations about Green Camp before we knew it was Green RCH -- "Did you pay to go, or was it free?" -- NYU's Deciphering Creationism with Shark Tooth Fossils MFA -- Fracking site -- What if it's a park. -- Or a private park for upper-middle class lake houses/vacation homes -- A multi-millionaire industrialist bought it and sits mostly unused -- Artist's residency program -- What if it wasn't sold and the memory is wrong. What if it was just too expensive to maintain and was therefore abandoned? --- Could lead into speculation of what we could do to transform it. Make our own institution on it? Occupy it? Make revenue generation programs off it? -- A vineyard -- A community college
- After Green RCH sign, Green Camp should only be referred to as Green RCH.
(in order)
- Speculations/expectations and realization
- Explorations of history(memory)/present/future and their overlaps. Deciphering what role the past plays in the present, deciphering the logic of nostalgia and its impact on future visions. Thinking about the inevitable cyclical nature of things while we maintain "learn from history's mistakes". [all of this is a carryover from the initial Green Camp and Ringwood videos]
- Losing (time, history, memory, orientation)
- All-too-common process of reaching for goals, only to be barred access, and to navigate restrictions and obstacles → eventual admit of defeat
- (and only fourth) Speculation about relations between the prison industrial complex and the education industrial complex
- Narrative doesn't start with a hook. It's not really an introduction. It doesn't say anything about the hunt.
- It starts off with loose language, and just gets looser. It's never tight. -- I'm not sure if I should change it, though. I am certainly interested in blurring whether this is history, a nonfiction account, or complete fiction. But maybe the way it is now leans too far towards just fiction. -- For one thing, it never says we sold it anymore. I recall Hito saying to remove that, but maybe it decontextualizes it too much. -- when i showed it to hito, she told me to remove it because i providing too much information to mythologize green camp. -- but now i'm wondering if it pushes it too far. i am looking to mythologize the place (or at least build up the reputation that green camp had for us), but i don't want to blow it out of the water. i do wnt there to be some roots in reality. maybe it's good to mention green camp's sale: to build up the mythology but then suggest a disconnect
- It doesn't make the story seem plausible at all, so there's nothing to suggest the whole thing is anything other than a work of fiction
- What's the logic of choosing captions vs centered text
- None of the slides look very "complete" (with the exception of the origin)
- It's hard to present something you want to be an artifact already. It's like you want this to be a website randomly encountered (or that you wish you had encountered it randomly) -- like you want it to have just randomly occurred "naturally" but you actually planted it.
- The idea of getting lost is important (space was lost, history was lost, position is lost) → getting lost on the internet? clicking through stream of consciousness links? -- it's like it has to be dumped in random places to get user input and understand the work --- but where?
- What is the significance of having a definitive start point? I can agree with having multiple valid endpoints, but right now that doesn't seem to be the case. they just end, they're not definitive.
- A critique on slideshows? Yes, I guess it is.
- First slide might immediately suggest it as a work of fiction
- Up contrast on the 1939 edited text image (make it really apparently that it has been glued together)
- -Sustainable slide could be a target for a jump-
- Embedded street view
- Highlight address on jail exchange screenshots