Involuntary Journeys: Interactive Storytelling on a Mapping Platform

Symposium:

• ISEA2019: 25th International Symposium on Electronic Art

• Data Visualization

• Involuntary Journeys: Interactive Storytelling on a Mapping Platform

• Mechthild Schmidt

Venue(s):

• Asia Culture Center (ACC), Gwangju, South Korea

• My associations to the theme ‘Lux Aeterna/Eternal Light’ in the context of my project:
  • Projection, lightpaintings, animating with light, shadows
  • Illuminate a story, brightening a day, viewing in a new light

  Involuntary Journeys is a storytelling projection that merges my interest in socially engaged art with the aesthetics of animated, projected light under my umbrella term of ‘Engaged Media’, spanning several visual platforms. I will combine two projections: the interactive map of individual refugee routes is overlaid with an animated light-drawing to build a rich visual texture.

  Involuntary Journeys is a blog and mapping project based on refugee interviews I conducted in a month-long storytelling project in Greece. The stories are the basis for geolocated journeys on Google Earth and Google Maps. The viewer can follow the story along an interactive path with links to narratives and photos – or view the journey as a time-based video. In the ISEA exhibition space the map will be accompanied by an animated overlay projection poetically relating to the stories using light and shadow as an associative layer to the geographical facts.

  This second projection is site-specific and can be moved to portable or bike-mounted projections.

Category:

• Artist Talk