Dean's Prize
I entered the USC Dean's Prize competition with this suggestion:
At USC, we say that we invent the future. What if we invented simultaneous realities?
Literature, art, and myths in every culture postulate or demonstrate the existence of other realms, realities that overlap with our sensual world. Increasingly, producers of varying media collaborate to construct worlds-on-top-of-worlds in immersive exhibitions like Disneyland, in films like The Lord of the Rings, and in video games like World of Warcraft.
Teach USC students to collaborate with each other now!
Allow creative writing, fine arts, interactive media, film, and architecture students to develop overlapping realities across the gardens of USC. Imagine walking around the USC campus and coming across ruins of temple. Imagine discovering a model of a futuristic city floating in a fountain. Imagine hundreds of strangely dressed students running through campus, participating in a live action game.
What are representations of other realms in mythology and literature? How do those myths and stories function in the imaginative media? What can we learn from a comparison of possible realities? How do we regard truth and what is its function in overlapping realities?
I propose a radically interdisciplinary class in which students from creative media majors read and theorize about overlapping realities in order to better construct their own. The final projects created in the class would be installed on the USC campus.