Twine story project: testing trajectories

So Twine’s a game building hypertext tool that freed people from mass quantities of coding. Games but also interactive stories and other species of e-narrative, which includes potential image narratives. And possibly dreaming the semantic web into place, since its based in part on RDF resource description framework tools.
Irresistible and accessible, although it would be great if WordPress would give us a plug-in option to host Twine builds instead of having to cross link to another site.
Anywho, I used Twine to contain some raw ideas for a project I’m building. Here’s the roughout: http://www.philome.la/DriftlessWorld/301-roadtrip
Thoughts and reactions invited, it’s one of those: “this is an interesting tool, now what?” moments.

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Three Visions of St Francis

Summertime growing up in Villas, NJ lots of my friends’ families were Catholic, Irish or Italian, some German or Polish. Almost all were blue collar, factory & shipyard workers. Or they got by otherwise. Some stayed with grandparents. The blessed Virgin was ubiquitous: on dashboards, front lawns, jewelry, framed next to her Son in every dining room where the mother fed the neighbor kids as well as her own. Some kids went to St Raymond’s school on Bayshore Road, but most went back to Philly, where their real homes were; the Villas was for summer vacation, fresh air for the kids, breathing room for mom and the Villas Fishing Club on the bay for men- only. The boardwalk over in Wildwood for everybody with a car or bus fare.

Labor Day Weekend marked the end of summer firmly as a door closing. The following Monday morning the streets were silent, window blinds pulled down, driveways- twelve hours earlier festooned with wading pools, kids, grills, beer bottles & fishing gear, empty. A vacuous quiet descended. Left behind we were all watchers in this new found emptiness, watchful for artifacts of the prior occupants, for signs that summer had existed at all. Mary would stare dolefully back at us from within her blue robes at various locations throughout the neighborhood, daring our trespass.

And then there was St Francis, keeper of beasts & of nature, benevolent & compassionate. Guardian of the wildness inside us all and protector of the earth, he would keep watch along the bay all winter long, and ever after.

Three Visions of St Francis Guarding the Delaware Bay

Three Visions of St Francis Guarding the Delaware

Three Visions of St Francis Guarding the Delaware Bay

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It All Just Happens Right In Front of You

Quick lab video as i work out using Vine. Wrapped around some raw ideas from recent exposures in Madison to PhotoMidwest, LBM, FrakPhoto & PaulVanderbilt. Orthophonic Joy  the 1927 Bristol Sessions Revisted soundtrack sampled in the background.

I used YouTube for the full upload & embedded (since WP doesn’t support unpaid video hosting), and will sample that on Vine. Supporting social media as part of the workflow can seem like a time suck, almost equal or even exceeding the creation/ producing the original material. BUT, the mix-in, cross-inked end results that SM can generate reframe, re-state, & adhere the original work’s ideas in a mashup of free associations.  Which, stripped of intentions reveal alternate narrative, subtext or archetypal surprise. As if the artists’ work turns on its creator to introduce itself as a product not so much of that one person, but of all the raw materials & circumstances exploited to produce the work.

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In Everyone’s Backyard

Evening walk down Airport Road, a residential, light industrial, verge of Wisconsin River wetlands mixed use landscape. Wilderness, industry and family homes collide in a kind of rural, blue collar pastoral. Which vista is sublime, which ridiculous? My beautiful cement factory, illuminated like a Byzantine icon. Where do we even begin to draw the distinction, when everywhere is altered and nowhere pristine, not even Yosemite Valley.

Because I see it everyday even the factory parking lot has gained meaning; for me and also for all who have worked/ work there- does our constant regard lend it an aesthetic also?I’m becoming obsessive about these kind of visual questions. Maybe it’s not healthy 😉

Antique Fairgrounds’ Clouds

These flat shots are all preliminary study done with a Samsung G4 phone, of subjects I’ll revisit to build out with the DSLR. Under the influence: Reframing the New Topographics

Packaging factory shiftworkers’ parking lot

Along the Wisconsin River floodplain

Sunset and cement, Highway 133 W, Boscobel

Define Beauty. Sunset, Hgwy 133 W. Boscobel

Notice the Red Truck

Near the Antique Fairground, Airport Rd

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Toast for William Eggleston

Under the influence of The Democratic Camera

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East meets Midwest

Nature is my jewelry store; so many beautiful things can be found walking through the woods or along the beach or riverside. Composed here: A fractured Atlantic moonshell from Assateague Island, VA, crayfish claw from Saunder’s Creek, Boscobel, laid  atop the bottom half of a painted turtle shell discovered along WI river bottomlands. Each item so meticulously designed in the wild.

Turtle carries the world on her back

Shorechild running wild; how many days do beachcombers come home with an assemblage of treasures like this jewelry box of shells from Assateague Island, VA {NOTE: please never take live shells and be aware of shore animal nesting and breeding seasons, from birds to horseshoe crabs our curious but ignorant human actions have a massive collective impact on the lives of wild things when we interfere, destroy and disrupt their homes. Honor and respect all living things.}

Beachcomber jewelry box

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