Forest of Imagined Beginnings was commissioned by Folly, Lancaster in 2007 originally produced as an online forum environment for people aged between 12-16 years for their Digi-Club. Enter_ Unknown Territories International Festival Cambridge commissioned a second instance of Forest of Imagined Beginnings for the festival in April 2007.

In Forest of Imagined Beginnings [FOIB] we are interested in how we access information and the potential to manipulate this process to encourage a more contemplative and rewarding experience. Users can explore a landscape approach to managing and navigating the changing space of an online forum for its potential to enhance and engage the user to a degree that exceeds that of a standard data management system. The online environment creates a spatially oriented approach to allow alternatives to our established data navigation that respond more intimately to our inherent ability to return to and navigate a remembered space.

In FOIB you can navigate through the forest and users can embed their own messages on selected trees which get permanently stored within a MySQL database. Visitors have used the environment in a variety of different ways - to express ideas, thoughts, to open up questions, to communicate to other users, write accounts of experiences and even to publicise their own work. Trees have been annexed by one user to write short stories.

Links:

Forest of Imagined Beginnings online project (2nd version)