PROJECTS - AUGUST 21, 2003

 

PLANNING MEETING AT FREE LIBRARY - PCI BRANCH, RITTENHOUSE SQUARE - AUGUST 20, 6 p.m.
We will be holding a meeting for all interested Capsule Day 2003 participants at the PCI Brand of the Free Library of Philadelphia, at Locust Street and Rittenhouse Square, on August 20 from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. This will allow capsulers, especially those planning Center City routes, to meet and set up points of connection for the next morning's activities. Also, a selection of video from 1999 will be screened.

This year's Capsule Day bookends the 1999 project: On Thursday, August 21, most of the original 1999 capsulers will retrace all or part of their routes, generating new 2003 footage of what was seen back then. New capsulers are now signing up with additional projects. One important addition is a City Hall-centered thread network which will be created almost entirely by new capsulers and will exponentially increase the virtual-reality navigability of the overall project. You can join this project by clicking here.

The idea is this: In addition to other footage being captured around the city, 7 capsulers will concentrate on an interlocking series of paths in a four-block radius from City Hall. Each path will cross and/or overlap each of the other 6 paths at least once, creating multiple intersections and a large number of possible routes through the overall footage. Additionally, one capsuler ("1") will be filming from City Hall Tower, giving an overview that connects to footage being taken on the ground.

The map to the left is one possible way of working this out, a working template for visualizing what will happen, but individual capsulers may modify it beforehand. Each of the 7 capsulers on the ground will start at the location indicated by their number and head off along the colored line that matches their number. At the point that they pass out of the mapped area, they continue essentially in a straight line for as long as willng. So Capsuler "5," for example, the dark purple line, would continue North on 11th Street until at least Spring Garden, intersecting with another Capsuler's Route. Capsulers "2" and/or "4," after "meeting" at the Parkway, might continue out the Parkway to the Art Museum.

Our priorities in this plan are twofold: 1)To have real-time connections between threads; to this end, this project will occur around 10:00 am on August 21, which is when we have access to City Hall Tower. 2) To have points of contact between the threads coming from the City Hall network and threads around other areas of Philadelphia, so that as much as possible of the day's submissions can be connected through real-time links. So we're planning ahead now to forge those connections and find out who wants to do what. Optimally more than 7 people will sign up for this network project so that routes can be assigned as 3a, 3b, etc. with "a" and "b" starting at the same point and following the same route, but at, say, a 5-minute interval.

Below is how the projected routes for the 2003 City Hall network are shaping up as of August 3rd. These are all tentative, with only initials identifying each route. Some other people have committed but not to specific routes, while some of these people may shift routes for optimal coverage. Of course, there are other routes around town that don't take place on this map. Routes will be finalized at the planning meeting on August 20.

To sign up for this project, click here and include your name and favored route. We will coordinate with you to allow for your input while fashioning a network that makes the most of its members' intersecting contributions. To sign up for another project around the city, click here, include your name and the area you'll be covering.