A Walk in the Woods

Diane Vadino

Project Description:

This is a narrative tour that directly imposes a fictional story into a real place—the place in which the story is set.

This piece explores the use of mobile media as a way to tell stories within their actual landscape—playing with the idea of verisimilitude and the inversion of the theatrical experience.

The setting for this piece is Buena Vista Park. The site was selected for its topography: its unusual wilderness within an urban setting, as well as the simple fact that it offers quite a distinct, steep climb, with an obvious path to a summit and then back down to the base.

The project hopefully takes advantage of the fact that this is, indeed, an urban setting, yet the park itself is an of surprising wilderness and solitude, and in some ways, the worst of both worlds, in that it offers the isolation of a wild setting as well as the physical threats of an urban one.

I hope to provoke a new experience between the user and the narrative—a narrative that is finally heightened by the experience of the user participating in the key landscape.

Final Project

Portion of text from story

Image of map: The plan is that people will eneter from the northwest corner and exit at the southwest.

Audio sample

A Walk in the Woods

Final project documentation

Event details

December 16

Come for treats (possibly) and miserable narrators. 3:00 - 4:00 p.m. Check in at the downtown-bound bus station, on the southwest corner of haight and baker streets. Bring your video ipod.