2004

Published: "Dimensions Eighteen" University of Michigan A. Alfred Taubman College of Architecture + Urban Planning, 2005, pgs 158-161

The Oral history, it is the story of the individual, a group, and the city. The individual and group can produce a distinct story that can easily be materialized onto paper. The city's story is not told in words, but through interactions of people, the environment, its enclosures, and the passage of time, i.e. immaterialized sources. An endless source of personal oral histories exists in many forms, a book in the library, the bytes of a computer and internet, reels of film, the Library of Congress, and infinite other sources. Each of these are limited resources that not everyone can obtain, and certainly cannot interact with. The challenge of the oral history is letting itself be heard. The city provides an amazing opportunity to display these oral histories and allow an interaction with them. By using the existing surface of the city one can coat the city with oral histories. A simple application of text only millimeters thick can display and produce these oral histories. A thin surface has the ability to fade away with wear and time. Once the surfaces of the city are covered with a story, the city can than respond with its own history through time. Sidewalks heavily traveled will reveal their constant use through the diminishing text on its surface, while sidewalks of less popularity will hold their stories longer. Patterns of transportation and usage will occur by what parts of the text remains, and what disappears. Histories will be applied, produced, altered and destroyed within the thinness of printed word.