StoryCubes

playful cubes for storytelling, brainstorming ideas or playing games in three dimensions

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Diffusion engaging with the community, online and out in the world.

Residencies

an ongoing programme enabling residents at Proboscis studio to create eBooks and StoryCubes for their own projects.

Learning, Schools & Education

eBooks & StoryCubes created for learning and educational purposes

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Browse the collection of Diffusion Shareables: eBooks & StoryCubes

Articles tagged with: collecting

Home » eBooks, Short Work
Sea Shanties
Submitted by on November 18, 2008 – 12:10 pmOne Comment

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Sea Shanties Volume 1 A4 | US Letter PDF 360kb
Sea Shanties Volume 2 A4 | US Letter PDF 395kb

Selected and Introduced for Short Work by Francis McKee, director of Glasgow International (2004-08), CCA Glasgow and Research Fellow at Glasgow School of Art.

Beyond society’s canons of literature there are the outlaws – songs and stories that survive in the wild. Sea shanties are among the hardiest of these forms and all the more remarkable for having their roots in a vanished world of sailing ships. There is a raw surrealism in sea shanties that is bred from endless nights in the belly of tomb-like wooden hulks floating on deep swelling oceans. The wild ramblings (‘Cape Cod kids ain’t got no sleds/They slide down the hills on codfish heads’) are tempered by the disciplined, rope burned, rhythms of the nautical work song. It is this emphasis on hard manual labour, combined with a sailor’s wicked word play, which gives these songs their enduring appeal. You can sense their influence behind Shakespeare’s sea song in The Tempest:

Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes;
Nothing of him that does fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell:
Ding-dong,
Hark! Now I hear them – Ding-dong, bell.

And you can hear them lurking in the sailors’ song in Thomas Pynchon’s Mason & Dixon – ‘Sumatra, where the girls all look like Cleopatra, and when you’re done you’ll simply barter…’ Sea shanties move with a swagger. They tempt purple prose and have given birth to long rambling movies from Moby Dick to Pirates of the Caribbean. They’re proof that not all our genetic code is in the marrow – some of it is in songs like these.

This selection is taken from the collection of Andrew Draskóy on his website Shanties and Sea Songs. As he suggests these lyrics are best heard sung and three good albums provide a starting point:

  • Sailor’s Songs and Sea Shanties (Highpoint, 2004)
  • Blow the Man Down: a Collection of Sea Songs & Shanties (Topic, 1995)
  • Rogue’s Gallery: Pirate Ballads, Sea Songs and Chanteys (Epitaph, 2006)
November 2008

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Home » Learning, Schools & Education, Residencies
Lisa Hunter – Diffusion Residency, July 2008
Submitted by on September 14, 2008 – 2:16 amNo Comment

Diffusion Residency with Proboscis, July 2008
Lisa Hunter
Collections Manager, Dundas Museum and Archives
Dundas, Ontario, Canada.

In my curatorial work with the Dundas Museum and Archives, I work with a local history collection, within the environment of a supportive local community, to produce exhibitions and related programming.  At the heart of my curatorial approach is the concept of storytelling, and most of my projects have been based on some form of information exchange with members of the community.  The primary goal of my residency with Proboscis was to explore ways in which I could build on the most successful aspects of these projects, and to develop additional and alternative approaches to the exchange and presentation of historical material.  Specifically, I wanted to learn how I might incorporate eBooks and StoryCubes into the work that I do at the museum, and to see how these tools might lead to new programs or projects.

The best approach for me was to begin by “jumping right in” and producing an eBook.  The technical and intellectual process of making my first eBook became a way of thinking through how I might use the eBooks (and StoryCubes) at the Dundas Museum.  Additionally, having the opportunity to speak at length with Giles, and other members of Proboscis, about the many innovative and creative ways in which the Generator has been used by others, was a very significant aspect of this residency.  Being in the studio, and being able to share ideas and to have an open exchange, was invaluable.  Further, having the opportunity to put some distance between myself and the museum allowed me to see things a bit more objectively, which is often difficult to do when you are in the thick of the day to day work.

I think the greatest benefit of this residency was that it resulted in a definite shift in my thinking about how a museum can interact with, and respond to, the community it serves.  My approach has always been to encourage dialogue between the museum and the public, but the tools for doing so in an informal yet elegant way have been missing.  Consequently, those efforts to facilitate exchange have been sporadic.  Those of us who work in smaller museums can often feel very limited in our ability to disseminate ideas, partly because of a longstanding tradition of thematically narrow, expensive and poorly distributed publishing ventures.  The Generator, conversely, allows for spontaneous, experimental, low cost initiatives that can be distributed more widely than was ever possible.  I think that our future success as a museum will depend on our ability to continue and deepen an ongoing exchange with our local community, and that the eBooks and StoryCubes are excellent tools for us in this regard.

Although the actual residency was for a one week period, I feel that my work with it is just beginning.  Not only have I spent quite a bit of time thinking about how past projects might have been enhanced or done differently with the utilization of the Generator tools, but I have also been developing a number of future initiatives, in consultation with other members of the museum staff.  While it seems that the eBooks and StoryCubes will need some time to become an automatic part of our curatorial “toolbox,” (i.e. to become a part of our organizational culture), there is a lot of enthusiasm and interest within the organization at this time.  There are currently two eBooks under development, and a plan in place to create a StoryCube set for a senior citizens’ education program in the coming weeks. Other uses are also being considered for future projects.

The residency with Proboscis was an extremely useful, thought-provoking, energizing experience, and I feel very privileged to have been invited to take part.  The new insights I gained are being shared with my colleagues at the museum, and I am hopeful that it will be the basis for a new, creative approach that will permeate our organization.  Working with Proboscis has been very inspiring, and has given me a fresh enthusiasm for pursing my curatorial goals.

The eBooks

Button Doll
Despair
Forget Me Not

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Home » eBooks, Residencies
Button Doll by Lisa Hunter
Submitted by on August 14, 2008 – 12:48 pm2 Comments

Download A4 | US Letter PDF 1.4Mb

About : This eBook is one component of the Community Story Telling Project of the Dundas Museum and Archives, a series of initiatives which offer opportunities for sharing memories, ideas and stories. The eBook was developed by Lisa Hunter during a residency with Proboscis in July/August 2008, and focuses on a unique and popular object in the collection of the Dundas Museum and Archives, the Button Doll. This unusual object was created between 1929 and 1932 by Emma Lewis of Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, and was donated to the museum in 1964. This eBook invites museum visitors to look carefully at the doll, and share their reflections and observations about it.  A series of eBooks focusing on a variety of objects in the collection of the museum will be produced using this format. 

Published August 2008

Lisa Hunter is Collections Manager at the Dundas Museum and Archives, a community history museum in Dundas, Ontario, Canada.  In addition to caring for a large social history collection, she develops exhibitions and related community outreach projects.  She has worked in a variety of roles in museums and galleries across Canada, and holds a Master of Museum Studies from the University of Toronto.

2 comments - Latest by:
  • l wilson
    hi, my friend and i are trying to revive button doll making and have recently hand written a book which…
    Comment posted on 5-3-2009 at 21:03
  • Deb
    great site!! definitely worth bookmarking
    Comment posted on 1-15-2009 at 21:49

Home » eBooks, Residencies
Despair by Lisa Hunter
Submitted by on August 13, 2008 – 12:26 pmNo Comment

Download A4 | US Letter PDF 3Mb

About : This eBook is the second in a series of publications that make publicly accessible a number of rare archival documents and books in the collection of the Dundas Museum and Archives. Normally not available to the public due to its extreme fragility, a poem from the 1853 publication A Floral Forget Me Not, by Henry F. Anners, has been reproduced with a number of related botanical illustrations from the book. The eBook will be utilized as a component of an education program focusing on the Victorian use of the “language of flowers.”

Published August 2008

Lisa Hunter is Collections Manager at the Dundas Museum and Archives, a community history museum in Dundas, Ontario, Canada.  In addition to caring for a large social history collection, she develops exhibitions and related community outreach projects.  She has worked in a variety of roles in museums and galleries across Canada, and holds a Master of Museum Studies from the University of Toronto.

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Home » eBooks, Residencies
Forget Me Not by Lisa Hunter
Submitted by on August 12, 2008 – 9:30 pmNo Comment

Download A4 | US Letter PDF 2.2Mb

About : The Dundas Museum and Archives has in its collections a large number of archival documents and books which cannot normally be accessed by museum visitors, due their extremely fragile nature.  Forget Me Not is the first in a planned series of eBook publications that will make these archival materials accessible to the public, despite their conservation restrictions. During a residency with Proboscis in July/August 2008, Lisa Hunter produced this edition, which utilizes an 1853 work in the museum’s collection by Henry F. Anners, The Floral Forget Me Not. In the eBook, an excerpt of the original text is paired with contemporary photographs of a Victorian cemetery, giving readers a glimpse into the literary, aesthetic, spiritual and social aspects of the time.

Published August 2008

Lisa Hunter is Collections Manager at the Dundas Museum and Archives, a community history museum in Dundas, Ontario, Canada.  In addition to caring for a large social history collection, she develops exhibitions and related community outreach projects.  She has worked in a variety of roles in museums and galleries across Canada, and holds a Master of Museum Studies from the University of Toronto.

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Home » Learning, Schools & Education, Publishing on Demand
Anarchaeology at Render
Submitted by on January 23, 2008 – 2:50 amNo Comment

Anarchaeology blog

Proboscis and Render are currently running a mixed graduate/under-graduate studio and seminar course at the University of Waterloo (Ontario, Canada) based on our concept of Anarchaeology. Over the next 12 weeks the students will conduct individual and group investigations into the environment of the university, Kitchener-Waterloo and the local region and, through a series of assignments, build up a body of artefacts (StoryCubes, postcards, eBooks, podcasts) for exhibition. A course blog will act as a repository of research, fabricated artefacts and discussion.

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