Trail City LA: Interpretive Walks in Historic Neighborhoods Kicks Off This Sunday
This Sunday, join the Interpretive Media Laboratory as they kick off a series of free, monthly guided walks around the historic neighborhoods surrounding the Los Angeles State Historic Park (also known as The Cornfield). Led by UCLA Professor Fabian Wagmister, the Interpretive Walks are an opportunity for IMLab to share its research and images about the past/present/future of Los Angeles and for dialogue about this rapidly changing part of the City.
IMLab is building Trail City LA, a network of interactive, community-authored digital walking trails through the City. This is the evolution of LASHP Trails, a site-specific mobile website that explores the past, present, and future of the LASHP area. The monthly walks are an opportunity for critical reflection about the participatory, digital tools IMLab is building.
The Los Angeles State Historic Park sits at a geological gateway that defines the City’s history. The Los Angeles River, indigenous trade, Spanish colonization, trains, freeways and much more have passed and continue to pass through this gateway. This passage between the valley and the basin is LA’s path of least resistance, its chokepoint, a site of natural and social mass convergence. On this walk we will explore the evidence of this gateway and how it has shaped Los Angeles.
The Interpretive Media Laboratory is an innovative partnership of UCLA and California State Parks that harnesses emerging technologies and cutting-edge research to create new ways for communities to use public space for discovery and interpretation of culture, history and nature; to engage civic processes that transform neighborhoods; to improve health and wellness; and to share their stories.
IMLab employs participatory design to build physically interactive, multi-media experiences and location-based mobile applications that together aim to enable collective creativity and exploration of identity. This approach, called Cultural Civic Computing, aspires to provide fun and thought-provoking ways to investigate critical issues in the environment and then translate the resulting new knowledge into collaborative, publicly exhibited creative work.
The walk will begin at Wellspring, IMLab’s interactive sculpture at 1800 Baker Street, and end at their workspace nearby where food and drinks will be served after the event.
Click here to learn more about the walks, IMLab, or the LA State Historic Park renovation project.