Storywalk

Fiction and history collide in virtual walking tour of Lower East Side

Eyebeam presents Storywalk, storywalk.shashafeng.com an experimental guided tour experience which insinuates the most basic of human imperatives, storytelling, into the realm of digital mapping. This collaborative piece, imagined by Eyebeam resident artists Christina Kral and Andrea Polli, and Sha Sha Feng, Zenobia Connor and Emily Gallagher, and developed with a team of New York City students, will be presented October 23 at 6PM at Eyebeam with special guest Art Historian John Maciuika from Baruch College/CUNY.

New York is a city filled with small communities that have evolved, culturally and socio-economically, many times over since the city's origin as a booming center of merchant activity. Communities are more than street grids and landmark buildings, items that can be mapped. Maps familiarize their users with unknown neighborhoods, but how might a map use personal narratives to fill an audience with a different sense of the terrain of a community? That is one question explored in Storywalk, which melds mapping technology with video, photography and descriptive analysis with neighborhood stories, both fictionalized and snatches of conversations overheard on the street, to create an experientially three-dimensional "walking" tour for audiences.

Using data collected by Hunter College/CUNY and other New York City students during a guided tour of several Lower East Side locations, the artists hope to illustrate the importance of self and community awareness-there are amazing stories circulating all around every day, and one needs only to stop and pay attention for a moment.