Elegba:
Urban Projection

Elegba is a multi-media site installation utilizing various sound, imaging, and communications technologies to tell the stories of Atlanta neighborhoods. The project uses as its conceptual base the image of Atlanta as both a city of dreams and as a crossroads. This strategy elicits the primary defining mythos of Atlanta in order to contextualize and provide a framework for the telling of both formal histories and personal stories.

The dream is prominent as a definer of the city. From the present Chamber of Commerce slogan' "Come Share Our Dream," to Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream," to Atlanta's widely held image as a place to live the "American Dream" of a consumable good life; dreaming defines and embodies Atlanta. The city's founding at a crossroads of two 19th century rail lines and its subsequent eventual rise to world prominence first as a rail transportation center, then as an air line and automobile distribution hub , and lately as a vital part of the information and communications superhighway is the other conceptual definer of the city and structural foundation for this project.

Elegba is conceived primarily as a communications project that will connect the neighborhoods of Atlanta with the world. As a counterpoint to the tendency to look only at the surface of a community without understanding the people or context of a place, Elegba will reveal the personal histories and stories underneath the image of the community.

Methodology

• Projection.Mood. Large projections set the conceptual framework, tone, and mood of the project. These projections will establish the idea of flow and its intersection (Crossroads) and its diversion by the daily lives of neighborhood residents juxtaposed with images of dreaming (both the psychic state and the waking process of imaging a better country, city, or personal life i.e., The American Dream).

• Story Frieze. Intimately scaled areas for viewing short personal video stories (30 seconds -2 minutes) text, photographic images on a series of video monitors located on Auburn Avenue. This site is conceived as a vehicle for telling the personal often neglected stories / dreams of neighborhood residents.

• Interactive Sites.Communications. Active communications demonstration sites linking the Auburn / I-75 / 85 site to neighborhood Internet demonstration centers and resident home pages. This site may include global satellite links to other communities and live conversation between neighborhood residents and residents of other world cities.

• Sayings Board. A continuous LED or video monitor message board with common sayings from around the world in several languages.

• History Site.Viewing. An adjacent area scaled for small group viewing of documentaries solicited in the call for videos.

Related Articles:

• Who Goes There? - Robert Cheatham

If you have further questions about its design or content,
contact: David Hamilton
email: xman@pd.org

City of Atlanta
Department of Housing/Community Development