Opening Sequence
Images and sound introduce the work, then send you into an environment chosen at random. Empathy Wheel is never the first stop.
Design document adaptedInside Fantastic Prayers
Ten sections. Eight worlds.
The Opening Sequence and Credits frame eight principal interactive environments. Each follows its own logic of image, sound, motion, memory, and surprise.
All eight environment pages include a short recording of the original running in the alongside descriptions informed by the design document and recovered material. Walls also has a browser prototype you can explore.
In brief
The descriptions now draw on the design document as well as the recovered files and my memories. The recordings show one path I chose through each environment, not everything you might find.
A street that is also a map. A pay phone offers an I Ching reading, graffiti opens a text, and entrances lead into the other environments.
A ring, a pen, a silver shoe, a blue cup. Objects turn in space and open into stories, performances, and music. You choose what to pick up.
A small circle follows your mouse through darkness. What you find opens a film, turning the chemistry of a strand of hair into a way into someone's life.
An aerial view leads into seven places among the graves. Stones sink, cameras turn, and films emerge, including a cameo by David Bowie.
Turn through a room of whispers, figures, and surfaces that respond. This was my first browser reconstruction test. The prototype's Kitchen subsection is still to come.
A charcoal jacket opens onto six worlds: Fabric, Indigo, Label, Hair in Pocket, Design, and Tortoise. Each visit leaves an image on the jacket.
Graffitied walls wrap around you. Words, images, and sounds appear as you explore. One opening leads to movable squares of sound; even waiting can change the scene.
A wheel with the feel of a country-fair game. Your choices call up emotional performances by Tracy Leipold. As I remember it, this was the first environment we built.
Credits
A place to leave the work or return to it. Credits lets you go back to the environment you left, with its state preserved.
The original audio tour
The original audio tour has voices by Sara Tucker and Lena Dunham and guitar by Stephen Vitiello. You can listen here. Duration: 04:17.