It all started IN 2018
After a year of offering workshops in new media storytelling, game design, transmedia and community art, the vessel transmedia lab developed the ephemera storytelling box project.
This post-digital multimodal storytelling artefact used the technologies from the 1950s to the 2010s to tell a love story set in Elliot Lake that reflected the boom-and-bust cycle of the city’s tumultuous history.
The story is told through letters, journals, playbills, stray notes, ticket stubs, artefacts (both created and vintage sourced), recordings, etc. . . All paper used is vintage from 1950s and 1960s. Created artefacts were painstakingly recreated and aged by hand.
With the word count of a novella, the ESB is not an artefact to be experienced at a quick glance. It’s a puzzle the reader pieces together through references and clues. It can be read in any order, with the dramatic unfolding of the story always different.
The esb was installed at the gallery at the centre in Elliot Lake when the arts centre that housed the gallery collapsed. It became the vessel transmedia lab’s final initiative.
