We went on a boat tour and it sparked many thoughts, both about the site itself and how we can continue to try to tell stories about it and work with it.
It was inspiring to join several people heavily involved with the Tideflats current restoration projects and hear their take on some of the site’s dynamics. We learned a lot and we’ll be processing for some time.
One cool characteristic/theme to follow through on: What seems toxic may be rather benign (paper mill, the gas storage tanks, etc) but there are far more insidious things at work hidden elsewhere (examples include recycling plant, stormwater runoff, trying to disperse the smelter plume but instead creating an insanely hard thing to clean up) – how would we even begin to show this in video???
Some other thoughts about the project’s structure after the boat trip:
Could the themes still exist with their rather ambiguous titling (land/water can mean so many things) and then we do the process to characteristic to synthesis thing from there. Each of the themes may end up taking on several processes/characteristics/synthesis we study. This might be too much of a branching tree though (in addition to the idea that the themes are such a catch-all any process can go under them).
Other idea: Just start doing characteristics without categorizing into themes. Maybe the themes are more defined later. Try to do as many characteristics as possible before time runs out. The themes are the processes so the branching tree is not as extreme.
Other other idea: Keep characteristics to one word. That serves as our prompt that everything is then framed around. As in these models and videos are supposed to show “excess” or “expanse”