Your grandmother’s kitchen when you were ten years old. The magical fortress of couch cushions that you made with your best friend. The idea you had of India before you visited. The aquatic world you visit in your dreams…
There are places that we remember and places we imagine that don’t really exist in our day-to-day world. They can’t be photographed or documented and yet they have tangible physical qualities. They smell like something, they taste like something. And they definitely look and sound like something.
Send us a postcard from that place. A two-dimensional visual representation of the place you remember or the place you imagine—a landscape, a map, an object, a chart–depicted through pencil, paint, print, photo… Then record the sounds of that place, or sounds about that place. Use professional recording equipment or your dad’s old dictaphone and give us a soundscape, a song, a dialogue, or a journalistic piece of your memory and imagination. An audio postcard and a visual postcard from a place no one else can visit.
We will collect these visual and audio postcards and post them together on a website, initially. Eventually, we hope to publish some of the entries in a book and/or display them in an exhibit. Your audio and visual postcards will become part of the “From the Great Isle of Imaginare” project (meaning we can’t pay you for use of your art if a book is ever made), but we will credit you, continually tout the prowess of your art and creativity, and shower you in your favorite cookies if you are ever a guest in our homes. Also feel free to use the art and sound you create for this project for your own purposes.
Postcards must be 4.25X6 inches on heavy card stock and able to be used as an actual postcard (blank on the back side, or only containing a description of the place, and room for writing and a stamp, like a real postcard). For information on where to send your entry, e-mail isleofimaginare@gmail.com.
Audio files must be a wav or mp3, no longer than 3 minutes and can be e-mailed to isleofimaginare@gmail.com.
We would like to have the first round of entries by April 1st, with hopes of posting a group of entries on the website by June. After that, submissions can be rolling.
You can contact us at isleofimaginare@gmail.com if you have any questions. Thank you SO much for your consideration, participation, time, and creativity. We are really looking forward to seeing and hearing the sights and sounds from your own world.
To the Great Isle of Imaginare, Bon Voyage!
Although Emily lives in Vermont and Heather calls Chicago home, the two are dear friends and have been sending each other letters, postcards, knitted objects, and mix tapes for years. The magic of the internet will expand their penpal circle and bring The Isle of Imaginare to life through a collection of imaginary audio and visual postcards. All are invited to submit. See the Call For Entries page or e-mail isleofimaginare@gmail.com for more information. Thanks for sailing by.
May 27, 2008 at 8:19 pm
This is great. I want to visit the Isle of Imaginare….I believe I have been there before and return often. For me, it’s somewhere between summers in Buffalo, NY and fort Niagara in Canada, where the French defeated the British (or something like that). They play George Bernard Shaw plays on a loop in the local theatre. And the soundtrack is always Jens Lekman and ubiquitous CCR. Oh, how I wish I could go there now….