Land & History

Land & History
Concept, Design, and Development by Paula Levine, Carolina Lucero Funes, and Romero Alves

Overview

Land & History is a section of ‘Scape the Hood, the first major gps-enabled locative media project in San Francisco. See the ‘Scape the Hood intro movie.

Land & History is a location-based project in the Mission district. The project space bounded by Mariposa Street to the North, by 18th Street to the South, Alabama Street to the West, and Florida Street to the East.

As the 1850’s map above shows, the mudflats of Mission Bay lie to the North and East. To the South, the grasslands and pastures. To the West, is a creek that still runs under our feet. Land and History peels back the layers of time to evoke a place before the overlay of the city; it presents a place and a time when this land was part of the Indian Canyon Nation. This project suggests that the past and the present exist as a two-way continuum.

Process

Content is tagged to each colored region on this satellite map. Background sounds are tagged to the large circles.

While we can’t re-create the actual gps-enabled walk, here are some audio files that are embedded in the neighborhood, and that you would hear as you “walked the walk.”

Imagine the sound of the environs before a city overlayed. (.mp3 file)
This is what the Ohlone Indians would have heard on a late October afternoon.
Paul Matzner, California Library of Natural Sounds, Oakland Museum of California

Water from an Native American perspective. (.mp3 file)
Ann Marie Sayers, Tribal Chairperson of the Indian Canyon Nation, gives us a better understanding of the way native peoples understood water.

A geologist talks about the neighborhood. (.mp3 file)
Judy West, neighborhood geologist and Project Director,The Madrina Group, speaks to the notion of topographical change, but considers how a surface layer changes what’s underneath.

Technology
iPaq handheld PDA
Mobile Bristol software
Audacity Recording Software
Mics and digital cameras
Laptops and Desktop computers

Partners
KQED, Public Broadcasting, San Francisco
Hewlett-Packard and the Mobile Bristol Platform Team
Digital Storytelling Festival

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