Not sure if it’s been washed away yet, but folks in the Bay Area should keep an eye out for this charming urban hypertext:
The mission stencil story is an interactive, choose-your-own-adventure story that takes place on the sidewalks of the Mission district in San Francisco. It is told in a new medium of storytelling that uses spraypainted stencils connected to each other by arrows. The streetscape is used as sort of an illustration to accompany each piece of text.
More images and some press links on this Flickr photoset.
(Thanks sMary!)
Hiya — longtime if:book reader here. I walked through this stencil story w/ a friend and it was AMAZING.
There are certain points where one of the characters looks up and sees something — the city skyline wreathed in fog, for instance, or a hill framed between two buildings — and then of course YOU, the player, look up, and see the same thing… and even though that shouldn’t be that stunning, it is. Absolutely floors you.
Some of the stencils have actually been covered over now, and I don’t know how diligently the stencil storytellers are maintaining it all. But while it lasted it was honestly one of THE coolest things around.