When All Things Could Speak

Loading...
Thumbnail Image
Can’t use the file because of accessibility barriers? Contact us with the title of the item, permanent link, and specifics of your accommodation need.

Date

2022-04-22

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

Abstract

With my project, "When All Things Speak" I've been working on the artistic work that blends archival research, digital design, and folklore specific to the central and Southern central regions of Indiana. I am creating an interactive, digital folktale using the international Electronic Literature as a Model of Creativity and Innovation in Practice (ELMCIP) Knowledge Base and Indiana University’s Lilly Library to digitally entangle buried archival folklore, computer learning, and local Indiana storytelling techniques in order to exhibit a responsive folktale co-authored by human, community, and machine. Synthesizing digital design with subversive folklore allows viewers to directly interact with what philosopher Pierre Bourdieu calls the “field of cultural production" of folktales, connecting dark lessons of the past to the context of today’s grim realities. In my proposed project, many participants will play a role in authorship, the imaginarium of the tale will come directly from its audience, and the user is promoted to an active role in the meaning-making. My research process is archival, analytic, and artistic. After examining archival folklore and collecting contemporary stories, I will analyze recurring motifs and ideas within the stories. Artistically, my design work will then respond to this data. Using my extensive experience as a graphic designer, I will develop new illustrations, animations, and typesetting, while also publishing the artifacts of the entire collaborative process in a digital artwork. Web-based and interactive, the proposed piece will be endlessly shaped by participatory tellings and re-tellings, mirroring the way mythologies adapt to contemporary moments. A kind of visual translation of the role and power that dark, midwest folktales have, my amalgamated tale will leverage the function that subversive, dark folktales have to help viewers visualize alternative futures. This carries particular relevance in this ongoing global reassessment of our relationship to the world around us.

Description

Keywords

Citation

Journal

DOI

Link(s) to data and video for this item

Rights

Contact author if you are interested in re-using any of this work.

Type

Presentation

Collections