Immersive media installation connects Angelenos to historic downtown park

By David Chute

Beginning on Friday night, Nov. 2, Los Angeles residents will see their lives flashing before their eyes as never before — on a 60-foot-wide video projection screen in a historic downtown park — during a four-day multimedia experiment that ties together the sights and sounds of this vibrant city.

"Junction" is an engaging multimedia project that brings to life the rich history of the people and places of this corner of Los Angeles. Driven by an interpretive database of media, sounds and images in the project will shift to the rumble of every passing Metro train, to the flow of the nearby Los Angeles River and even to text messages from mobile phones.

It's also the latest project of Remapping LA, in which UCLA works with neighborhoods, youth organizations, public institutions and grassroots groups to explore the use of new technologies in promoting civic engagement and community empowerment. Through the use of mobile devices, "digital memory" collections, gather and present relevant information about themselves and their environment, and create their own representations about their history, present and — perhaps most importantly — their future aspirations.

"Junction" is the work of a group of innovative UCLA students, faculty and staff — along with Walt Disney Imagineering, California State Parks and community members — to connect people with this historic park, a 32-acre site northeast of downtown surrounded by Solano Canyon, Chinatown and Lincoln Heights. The site is where the first railway depot and hotel were built in Los Angeles.

The project showcases the history of L.A., the interwoven relationships of the city's reinventions and rhetoric, its mythologies and massive infrastructure, and the movement of its peoples: the adventurers, Spanish explorers, railroad developers and laborers, Pueblo settlers, rancheros, indigenous people and many others who trekked through this historic location.

The project is an initiative of UCLA's Center for Research in Engineering, Media and Performance (REMAP), which has partnered with the School of Theater, Film and Television and the Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science. Remapping LA is partially funded by a grant from the UCLA Center for Community Partnerships.

"One of Remapping LA's purposes is to explore how technology in public space can be a means for exploration and expression of local identity," said Jeff Burke, executive director of REMAP. "We want to provide a resource for local communities and other L.A. citizens so that they can engage with the history of the park site and the communities surrounding it — the physical and human geographies of L.A. itself."

"Our intention is twofold," explained UCLA Film, Television and Digital Media Professor Fabian Wagmister, creator of Remapping LA and the director of "Junction." "First, to bring people together to explore the city's rich multicultural history, still unknown to so many Angelenos. And second, to reflect and discuss the nature and importance of motion in the past, present and future of the city."

Walt Disney Imagineering's involvement with REMAP is an outgrowth of its ongoing relationship with UCLA, where Imagineering's Chief Creative Executive, Bruce Vaughn, teaches "The Art and Process of Entertainment Design," an innovative course in telling stories in three dimensions. Along with Professor Wagmister's "Engaged Media Production" class, Vaughn's course generated an eight-month series of dialogues among REMAP faculty and students, Imagineering and State Parks interpretive designers. The result is "Junction."

"Imagineering's Research and Development group worked with UCLA to create an energy and interactivity to draw people into the park and experience the motion and rich heritage of the local landscape," said Vaughn. "The exhibit changes continually, based on visitor involvement — by text messaging, movement and the timing of nearby automobile and Metro Gold Line train traffic."