Academic Paper Writing Service http://StudyHub.vip/2018-Stanford-Creative-Cities-Working-G 👈

1. S. Topiary Landberg, UC Santa Cruz
Film & Digital Media
stopiary@ucsc.edu
May 12, 2018 • Stanford CCWG Conference
For those of you who weren’t here last year when I presented — I’m getting a PhD in Film & Digital
Media at UC Santa Cruz and part of my dissertation is a web-based documentary called Exit Zero: An
Atlas of One City Block - which will be what’s generally called an iDoc or interactive documentary that
tells the many layered stories of one inner city block in the San Francisco neighborhood of Hayes
Valley where there used to be freeway exits and then there was a famous interim use community
garden and now there is an “eco-chic” market rate apartment complex.
S. Topiary Landberg, UC Santa Cruz
Film & Digital Media
stopiary@ucsc.edu
May 12, 2018 • Stanford CCWG Conference
Just to orient you —- the block this project focuses on is right in the center of San Francisco in a
neighborhood called Hayes Valley — a place that some consider one of the ground zeros for what has
been called hyper-gentrification.

2. As a filmmaker, I am thinking about the single city block as a kind of character, an individual — the
smallest unit of city as defined by its planners — and I think this block is a particularly good
microcosm for dramatic transformations that have occurred over the past 150 years or so in the Bay
Area.
Because this project has many stories — and one of the challenging aspects for me has been the
question of how to tell a nuanced and complicated story in a way that can intrigue viewers and also
provide for a multi-linear experience. Ive been a performer and a filmmaker for many years and this
project is the first time that I’ve tried to work in this kind of non-linear way — so, part of the challenge
of this project for me is to present this work for the small screen - web experience which will be a
multilinear documentary. This is a screenshot of the software that I’m using - I’m very much in the
prototyping stage… As I’ve been developing this micro-geography documentary, and as one that
engages with the construct of the map as an interactive interface, I’ve been thinking alot about the type
of conceptual navigation that I’m offering to audiences.
Freeway Farm Condos
1958-2003 2010-2013 built in 2015
Which is to say — how do you tell a story that is not strictly linear, that allows for the audience or
interactors with the site to explore the thematic resonances across time periods. And one of the ways
that I’m thinking through this challenge is by creating a number of different kinds of menus or
interfaces as access points to videos and other media in the project. So, I’ve been playing with
different ways of representing navigation and story. And since I am calling this iDoc an “Atlas” I’ve
been really engaging with different kinds of mapping and conceptual navigation.

3. For those of you not familiar with the area — I think of this project as a long view of gentrification and
the creative forces that have continually transformed this block. And with that in mind, I want to
introduce you to the place with a short video that I’ve edited together — this is a re-edit of the video
that I showed last year — using the sound and some of the images from a promotional video for the
Avalon Hayes Valley apartment complex that is located on the block. < GO TO KLYNT >
So, this is my first stab at a project opening — it’s a screen recording that demonstrates what happens
when you mouse over each of what I think of as the 3 main states or periods of the block — and if you
were to click on any of the three images, each one takes you to a different video and into a different
section of the project.

4. For example, if you click into the condo section you will watch some version of the video about Avalon
Hayes Valley that I showed you and then there will also be other materials, including a video that is the
point of view of touring the property as a prospective tenant. You can also encounter more experiential
media, such as this video, which we shot in the courtyard of the building. My interest is to provide
affective experiences of place, and not just didactic information.

5. These affective experiences also allow for different kinds of curiosity and opportunities to cross into
different phases or topics. So, the birds and the plants might lead one to click into the Hayes Valley
Farm section as well as other periods, such as an exploration of the flora and fauna that existed there
before the 20th century or the resonance between the idea of Avalon as a “retreat from the city” and the
19th century Hayes Pavillion that Thomas Hayes built as a tourist destination to the neighborhood in
the decades that followed the Gold Rush.
If you enter the Hayes Valley Farm section — you can take a tour of the farm, which is a video that
gives you an experience of what it was like to be there while Hayes Valley Farm existed. And you can
also click into other subtopics. For example, there’s a video about permaculture and the kinds of
permaculture that were practiced at the farm.
The link to the seed library takes you to a page with other links — where you can watch a video about
the seed library at Hayes Valley Farm and you can also access many other links — so I think of this as
the Hayes Valley Farm link library, which are seeds to other works and other places.

6. In the Freeway Section will begin with this video:
When it finishes it will automatically lead you to
The Great Freeway Revolt is credited with influencing the popular reputation of San
Francisco as both a politically progressive and environmentally conscious place.
To the Great Freeway Revolt section — which will give you information about that decade long anti-
freeway activist fight throughout the 1960s that eventually succeeded in cancelling many of the
planned freeways in San Francisco.

7. I mentioned that there are multiple different interfaces for navigating what you probably are seeing is a
complicated web of inter-related topics and periods. A second interface that I am working on is what I
am calling a contextual compass.
Each of the four quadrants on the compass leads to its own submenu… I’m still working on the
designs. So, my hope is that by grouping different periods together thematically — this can lead to
interesting montages and juxtapositions. And it’s also helping me to think through different kinds of
poetic or thematic linkages.

8. Another type of navigation offered is the timeline, which, despite seeming to be an assertion of
linearity, actually allows for one to navigate periods across time and understand time abstractly. So —
this is very much a work in progress — it’s really not at all ready to show you but I just wanted to give
you an idea of what I’m playing with
This is a very imperfect mockup but it gives you a little bit of an idea of how something like this will
work — where you mouse over a date and it shows you a different image…

9. And since I am calling this project an Atlas, I also thought I should provide a kind of index to all the
different Story Maps that I’m creating as interactive media experiences — I know I briefly
demonstrated some of the storymaps that I’ve been working on when we did the mapping session —
many of the sections of the project have some kind of Story Map associated with them.
For example, the Market-Octavia Plan section — which was the plan to sell the former Central
Freeway land parcels to raise money
Will include the Former Freeway Parcels Story Map — which enables you to explore all of the
different freeway parcels and what they’ve become today — not just the one block that my project
focuses on….

10. To conclude, my hope is that this project can provide historical context for thinking about the issues the
city faces today — a kind of long view of gentrification, creative place-making, environmentalism and
community activism that are all essential aspects of San Francisco’s identity. This is a project that aims
to shake out some of the fixed notions about gentrification and who belongs and doesn’t belong to a
place, and instead tries to think structurally about the collective and collaborative forces that allow a
city to develop and change in particular ways. I also want to say that so much of my thinking about this
project has been influenced by this group. In particular, the idea that the “Gezi Gardens” occupation
which happened right after Hayes Valley Farm closed could be considered a kind of “revolt” came
directly out of really provocative and helpful comments and connections that Aku made in her response
to my presentation last year. So, I just want acknowledge how really great participating in this working
group has been for me and to thank all of you. And
<earthquake> earthquake as a revolt against the freeway - one that demonstrates a nonhuman kind of
agency
My hope is that this project will peak people’s curiosity about the local, small place, to allow the past
to speak to the present in order to inspire us to think both critically and imaginatively about what kinds
of creativity are possible when we work together and to advocate for the commons, both the physical
commons and the digital.