Brainstorming with Walt Disney Imagineering

1. Initial Impressions

My perceptions on the dialogue between REMAP and Walt Disney Imagineering are, for now, solely based on a meeting between UCLA, WDI and NUS (as represented by myself) on 29 November 2006. WDI houses itself in a nondescript studio at Glendale, which is a half-hour drive from Westwood, where UCLA is. Beneath the normalcy of the exterior, however, was a bustling creative environment where various television programs screened under the Disney Channel are storyboarded, and where other Disney-related creative pursuits are visualised.

The meeting yielded numerous ideas for the Remapping LA project. These were, however, at the very preliminary stage; some of these ideas do sound rather promising. A brief introduction on the project site was given by Jeff Burke and FabianWagmister (REMAP), and several ideas as to how the site may be intervened to facilitate an interactive park were generated. (Some of these have been briefly mentioned in preceding posts.) The following are photographs from the meeting, as well as a list of ideas which were floated around and bounced off amongst the participants during the course of the meeting.

2. Ideas generated from REMAP/WDI Meeting

The ideas that emerged from the brainstorming session can be categorically listed as follows. (Details have been removed to avoid intellectual property-ownership issues; kudos to Chase Knowles for the following list.)

- installations that interweave experience, technology and process
- the involvement of historically-dislocated communities
- the empowerment of these communities through technology design
- fixtures and/or production as a prototype for future Park endeavours
- mapping of the city of Los Angeles onto the Park (and vice versa, perhaps??)
- projection of private community stories into public space
- every interface is a new experience
- fixture as a memory hub which reflects flow of community history
- park as a central destination point for visitors to Los Angeles

3. Continuity

A further meeting on 12 January 2007 between REMAP and WDI R&D will further brainstorm the above ideas, which are still very preliminary and lacking in structure and/or organisation. Perhaps some links may be made between some ideas, and perhaps preliminary visualisations of some of these ideas could be effected during/after the meeting.

Several better ideas will likely be shortlisted, and then refined (redefined if need be), and sent to the WDI R&D Advisory Board. This will be further narrowed down to three major ideas suitable for further concept work and design.

REMAP's goal is to have a clear idea of what we would like to pursue by February, and then begin concept development and construction during the summer.