ABOUT UNKNOWN TERRITORIES
Unknown Territories combines linear and interactive cinema in a non-traditional documentary about environmental conditions of the desert American West. Unknown Territories creates paths among mythic and actual landscapes shaped by development, park preservation and dams.
The initial concepts were developed through a series of river trips and hikes in the desert southwest, including explorations with poet, scholar and river-guide, Lance Newman, who joined the Canyonlands portion of the project as co-producer and co-writer.
The project crosses history -- beginning with how John Wesley Powell pictured the arid West for an expanding nation, contrasting this with Edward Abbey's books depicting an environmental vision gone wrong, and arriving at perspectives upon desert conditions of our time, with special attention given to relationships between science, use and artistic imagination.
The project allowed for an exploration of kinesthetic experiences (walking, path-making, interactivity) and lyrical, visual techniques (mapping, montages, animation, long takes) that are taken up in a discussion about walking deserts between Larry McCaffery, Lance Newman, Hikmet Loe and Roderick Coover.
In looking at relationships between digital interface and spatial practices the project asks, how do interactive formats expand ways to understand how places are imagined, encountered, represented and re-imagined? The original interactive approach offers viewers something unique in cinema: choice-making. A virtual environment draws viewers into a film editor's process of weaving materials together. The materials are organized in modules on topics such as discovery and native land use, water use, the uranium boom, and the marketing of nature. The modules combine to make longer works -- short documentaries aligned on maps in installation form and feature works for cinema and DVD.
The project has also allowed for a consideration of how digital media reconfigure other media. How do digital arts enable re-interpretations of the form and content of prior films, photographs, panoramic techniques, advertisements, maps, and audio recordings? The interactive environments and cinemascapes offer viewers something that a linear documentary cannot: choices. The format has a loose analogy with film editing; laying clips along a terrain is not unlike the process of creating a timeline only here the timeline is visible to viewers. Further, the clusters of materials that are collected en route are not unlike those one might have collected in bins, only now the bins contain more than just footage. The footage that went into the video clips is also included in its original form, and long takes of interviews supplement the edited sound bites. |
INTERVIEWS
• Interview with Ken Sleight
• Interview with Jack Loeffler
• Interview with Jim Stiles
• 4-Way Discussion: Larry McCaffery, Lance Newman, Hikmet Loe and Roderick Coover.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR-ARTIST
Roderick Coover makes interactive installations, films and visual research projects. He lives in Philadelphia and teaches in the Department of Film and Media Arts at Temple University.
SELECT WORKS BY RODERICK COOVER
• Switching Codes: Thinking Through Digital Technology In The Humanities And Arts. University of Chicago Press.
• The Theory Of Time Here. Video Data Bank.
• Verite to Virtual: Conversations on the Future of Visual Anthropology and Documentary Film. Documentary Educational Resources.
• The Language of Wine: An Anthropology of Work, Wine, and the Senses. Amazon.
• Cultures In Webs: Working In Hypermedia With The Documentary Image. Eastgate.
For more, visit www.roderickcoover.com
CREDITS AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Unknown Territories is created by Roderick Coover. The Canyonlands sections were co-produced with Lance Newman. Unknown Territories was funded in part with support from the LEF Foundation, Temple University, and California State University, San Marcos. Detailed credits are listed in each section.
Interviews with Jim Stiles, Ken Sleight and Jack Loeffler were first published by Reconstruction: Studies In Contemporary Culture, 2010.
The 4-Way Discussion: Larry McCaffery, Lance Newman, Hikmet Loe and Roderick Coover was first published in the Electronic Book Review, 2010.
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