by Jan Kocian
I’ll be conducting a workshop at a teachers’ conference with a mockup of a mobile field guide I’m working on. This will be the kind of field guide that paper can’t produce, a guide that will show you behavior of creatures (video), interactions between creatures instead of a separate page for each one, and so you can keep looking at cool stuff while learning, it can read to you! And the content won’t be just science-y stuff, it’ll also include cultural interpretations: poetry, art, stories, etc.
And I’d like to use some of YOUR media in the mockup. The intention is that the content in this field guide will be community derived, like a wiki, though eventually when it becomes sustainable it would be nice if it rewarded the contributors.
For this first mockup, we’ll be focusing on just a few specific creatures that are common in the intertidal to get the concept across: moon snails, dungeness crab, haystack barnacle, sand dollar, and shield limpet; and the pink scallop which is more subtidal. These may change depending on how successful our media search is.
I’m looking for media that will illustrate this field guide’s revolutionary emphasis on relationships between creatures, behavior, and not just isolated portraits. So send me your pictures/video of these creatures actively engaged in being part of their ecosystem, or that show the context in which they live. Relevant poetry and pictures of artwork, stories, and even music are welcome as well.
The mockup needs to be done by the end of June 2015, so I’m looking for these ASAP. You’ll be credited for the media, as a matter of fact if you can put your name at the bottom of the picture or at the end of the video it will save us the work of having to do that.
I’ve included a couple more images below that illustrate what I have in mind for showing creatures in “context.” As a matter of fact, these pieces of art helped inspire me to think that art can be used to help people see the ecosystem instead of just individual creatures.
by Jan Kocian, see More
This picture below was taken at an art exhibit that exemplified showing things in context.
sculptures by David Eisenhower, see More
