100 Years Later - Scaping the Quake

This project was a collective project between the students in the Locative Media class in the Conceptual Art and Information department of San Francisco State University. The project goal was to create a gps-enabled locative media revisioning of the Great San Francisco Earthquake of 1906. But, we didn't want to just recreate what was, but we wanted to add commentary that would inform our understanding of today. We believed that by better understanding the past and the present, we are better able to move into the future. It was not without a little irony and much sadness that we noted just 6 months earlier another great American city had been completely devastated. It was impossible not to comment on the similarities and the differences between San Francisco in 1906 and New Orleans in 2005.

Backgrounder:
The project was placed in the Civic Center, right across the street from City Hall. It was one square block bounding by McAllister Street to the north, Grove Street to the south, Larkin Street to the east, and Dr. Carlton B Goodell Street to the west. View map

As with any research project, much of the work happens before the actual piece is created. All of those involved in the work ended up reasearching and so a collaborative site was set up to house all of the Earthquake Links we were each discovering separately. Earthquake Links

We found no shortage of photographs Images of the Earthquake

As interesting as the old photographs were, the stories associated with the event were fascinating. We found a marriage site that documented the love that bloomed into marriage and the children that followed. The same phenomena was noted in the 1989 earthquake, this time referred to as "earthquake babies."

On April 18, 2006 on the centennial celebration of the Great Quake, we launched the walk. While we distributed the maps mentioned above, the content visualization looked like this. Each colored region and each dotted circle had audio and in some cases visuals attached. Participants experienced the project using gps-enabled handhelds, and we were favored with wonderful weather.

Walking

Checking out the lay of the land

Two walkers

Getting suited