Downstream A Shining Wire

Downstream a Shining Wire is: a ruin, a spatial scrapbook, a set for a virtual stage and the plays that happened upon it. It is an effort at resurrecting the dead shopping mall of my youth in response to a sense of dwindling commons. Through virtual necromancy my collaborators and I attempt to resuscitate a space that once provided human connection. Within this ruin of the future, we build fugitive worlds together, and tell stories inside stories to keep warm.

This project includes:

• “Downstream a Shining Wire” a 3d environment recreating a semblance of the former Cottonwood Mall. The space includes an original musical score by Ultrademon.
• The soundtrack to “Downstream a Shining Wire” as 10 separate tracks (MP3).
• “Cottonwood Mall Scrapbook” a 3d environment comprised of images and blueprints of the mall scraped from the internet and government archives. (This environment includes many hi-res image textures and may run slowly on some machines)
• The videos “the Black Rabbit of Inle” parts 1 and 2, and “the Shining Wire,” digital videos recorded in virtual reality. In the videos we act out scenes from Richard Adams’ Watership Down—wherein a warren of rabbits must seek a new home together after their original home is destroyed by property developers. They recount rabbit myths to inspire each other to keep going. 

This work was produced by Tabitha Nikolai, Ultrademon, Allynn Carpenter, Zanna Kerrigan, Cassandra Gladwin, and sam.

A version of the mall is currently publicly accessible on the VRChat platform. It can be accessed by creating an account and searching for the world (Downstream a Shining Wire) in the worlds menu. It is made public in this form so that anyone who can access VRC can likewise use the revised mall for their own commons, and their own stories.

This work was made possible in part by support from the Open Signal New Media Fellowship, and the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art Creative Exchange Lab.