Passepartout

This project was a collaboration between Justin Williams and Alyssa Korinke, students in Washington State University Vancouver's CMDC program, as part of Dr. John Barber's Digital Storytelling class. The student works for this class will be curated as part of the "Chronicles: Stories of the Past, Present & Future" show.

 

The initial spark that led to this project was the idea that maybe Jean Passepartout was not who we thought he was. Maybe, rather than just a valet with a checkered past, he was a being from a parallel universe who was stuck in the time of steam engines and transcontinental railways, but simply needed a way home. We hope that in the creation of this project we can give a fun and imaginative new spin to the story, Around The World in 80 Days. Our objective was to create an interactive experience that immersed the user in the story and led them on a journey of their own. The locative storytelling tradition, as well as a little bit of sci-fi and steampunk culture, heavily influenced our decisions and the end product.

 

Augmented reality, sound, printed graphics, and locative aspects were all used to tell different aspects of the story. We used the Aurasma app to add a layer of digital media to hard copy posters to reference our interdimensional travel spin, sound to convey some of the more interesting events of two legs of the journey, and location based gaming to increase interactivity. Because he story itself was created in parts that will all be referenced in separate pieces and accessed at separate locations, the audience is able to experience the story in a non-linear fashion, but still have enjoyment out of each individual piece.  

We had hoped to achieve something similar to geocaching, but with storytelling at the root rather than random trinkets to be discovered.  The idea was to give the audience a starting location, and then a description of how to find the story piece from there.  Although the end result is slightly different from our initial plans, we've created an innovative story to be told across multiple platforms. Through having the story accessed at different locations throughout downtown Vancouver and creating a locative story telling experience.  The audience is drawn to these locations in order gain access to more of the story, and in doing so they are walking around and interacting with others.

 

This project was a big undertaking and required both patience and tenacity. Though we did not start out with all of the technical skills necessary, we were able to learn and improve our skills through the process.