2008 Rockefeller New Media Foundation Proposal

Contaminating the Preserve is a distributed, interactive audio tour of sites in Northeast Florida. Specifically, the tour will attempt to engage participants in questions about history, ecological preservation, race and environmental justice in the context of two divergent sites located in Jacksonville, Florida. One location is the Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve, a vast collection of nature preserves and historic monuments that celebrates the region's coastal ecologies as well as its colonial past. The second site is a 40 square mile portion of the city, just West of the Timucuan Preserve, that contains a large number of former solid waste incinerators and dumps, adding up to at least 261 acres of toxic land. The tour will be accessible through a phone-based interface, spread to potential participants by way of printed maps distributed throughout art, culture and environmental organizations in the area. The tour will also be facilitated by an exhibition of documentary and creative artifacts, and a planned series of events to take place in Jacksonville, FL at cultural institutions like the Ritz Theatre/La Villa Museum and the University of North Florida