Project on the Big Screen

During the lunch break at THATCamp, George Mason University’s Center for History and New Media‘s digital humanities unconference, I showed a brief glimpse of the project before an audience of professors, historians, digital tool builders, and digital humanists of all stripes. Of course, I was the first to go over my 3 minutes (earning a play of a jaunty little tune I can’t recall the name of, which i had no idea what it was, causing a bit of a laugh), but generally, the project was well received. I might say it was the least institutional of all projects I saw (i.e. clearly grassroots and not the product of a team of professionals), but maybe that is where its intrigue lies. I heard some feedback from folks who meandered through the site after the first day workshop, with my favorite comment coming from Bethany Nowviski, who called the project “fresh.” Yes, fresh works for me.

Despite the fact that my family interviews have been woefully neglected, I’m just as thrilled as ever to think about this site, though certain elements of the Why Here/Why Now project have not materialized because of the need for further thinking (and further tech skills). Eventually, I hope, it will end up in a partnership with at least one other local organization, possibly with podcasts or radio documentary spinning off from this multimedia site. I want to map memory and place and social history. I want to get lost in the idea of place; how we come to know one and how it mediates our experience.

I will also have a chance to talk about the project at the 2009 Oral History Association annual meeting in Louisville, themed “After the Interview.” My proposal was based on a broad conception of what this project is and does, and how changing media has created the space for people with average, consumer grade tools to document “the now.” As it is, oral history has not traditionally been so concerned with the present, but I think new tools allow for new kinds of documentation.

Also, the American Folklore Society will have me in their annual meeting in Boise this October– themed “The Ethics of Place.” I proposed to talk about this project as a way to explore contested ideas of place, which, here in Yellow Springs, often pivots on ideas of conservation of greenspace, affordable housing, and economic development. I hope to gather some thoughts from locals on the subject. The Wordle tag cloud of my proposal sums my abstract up nicely: