Culture Cache: Travel through Representation
December 4th, 2015 By Teeter
Concept Development:
Swift Creek Complicated Stamp pottery – Scholars believe SCCS designs may have been used to represent people. Taking a SCCS pot from one location to another may have been an offering or representation of an important person that was not able to make the journey.
Stone Mountain – Occupation of the area began before Euro-American contact. Woodland people that lived in the area created a rock wall on top of Stone Mountain. Stones were taken or even rolled down the face of Stone Mountain for fun. There are contentious feelings towards Stone Mountain due to the Confederate engraving on the front. Recently, plans have been suggested for a Martin Luther King, Jr. monument at the top. Stone Mountain Park has focused their interpretation primarily on the Confederacy slowly incorporating Civil Rights themes. American Indian occupation of the area is ignored as part of the park’s narrative.
Bringing It Together :
Culture Cache is a community experience that utilizes the ideas of representation and representational travel. Based on the idea of geocaching, Culture Cache invites users to create a piece of pottery that is imbued with their personality. Selecting an adventure in Culture Cache leads users to American Indian sites to place their representational pottery for others while picking up another user’s representation. Pottery traveling from site to site, with documentation within the app, allows users to travel through their pottery; all the while learning about American Indian history.
The home page offers the ability to search for cache adventures, as well as tracking your own caches and pottery.
Cache Adventures are based around themes supporting American Indian sites.
Adventure examples include:
Woodland Builder – These sites feature stone walls built by Woodland people.
Woodland Traveler – Sites range from Florida to Northern and Western parts of America, as a way to learn about and experience Woodland trade route.
Mound Builder – These two adventures focus on the monumental architecture of their respective periods.
Start page for an adventure. The significance of each adventure is explained.
Location page. Each location is explained within the context of the adventure.
Tracking geolocation of cache. Users can take photographs, record thoughts and share.
Taking a new picture.
Documenting through pictures.
Documenting thoughts and experiences.
The Trackables page shows pottery you have left at each site and their new locations.
Points show the details of travels, including user, site, and documentation.