Earlier today I posted about a project designed to encourage students to gain an understanding of how sources in history can be utilised to build an argument or an account relating to an event, personality or period in history.

Back in 1996, together with artist Nathan Simpson, I created a fictitious landscape back that is bleak and empty of human life. The object for the students was to gather a variety of clues and piece together what has happened. I have reworked a few more images from the project and smaller copies of the same are displayed below together with those also posted earlier.

How would you use these images? A wiki? A blog? A dedicated web site? Allow the students to take the images and rework them and add additional clues?

The completed project will include additional images that depict the embedded clues in an enlarged format.

Simply based on the images shown below what do you think befell the denizens of this landscape?

Opening scene

Closer view of the town

Exterior view of house

Interior view of house

Exterior view of library

Interior view of library

Exterior view of metro rail station

Interior view of metro rail station

Exterior view of research laboratory

Interior view of research laboratory

Opening scene to “Hunger City” [1996][Large][Original]

Back in 1996 I created a HyperCard stack titled “Hunger City”. It was inpired by two factors. The first was David Bowie’s introductory sequence to the album Diamond Dogs, entitled Future Legend. The second factor was to create a tool that would allow students to explore a range of different types of evidence and then draw their own conclusion. This is a skill required of students in the study of history. They examine the various historical sources, look for accuracy, bias and the like and compose their views regarding the event, personality or subject matter. Science fiction crept into the story for this project as well.

I enlisted the assistance of a former student for this project, Nathan Simpson. I taught Nathan Introductory French language when he was in Year Eight back in 1987. Later I managed the school rock band, The Evicted, in which Nathan was the bass player. Nathan is an excellent artist and over the years we have collaborated on a number of projects. Nathan is an accomplished artist and worthy of your exploration. I shall be MC at his wedding later in the year.

I took Nathan’s original black and white sketches, that were created using pencil, ink, charcoal and toothpaste and reworked them using Photoshop.

Nathan created the original artwork for this HyperCard stack. We sat down together and I shared my storyboard ideas with Nathan. The vision was for a bleak city of the future without human survivors. I am resurrecting the artwork for an online version of the activity. I am reworking the graphics and updating the embedded evidence.

Key navigational elements in “Hunger City” [1996][Large]

When students explored the HyperCard stack they were able to collect “clues” and make notes. The desolate city that was the underlying metaphor for the ‘story’ featured four areas that were enriched with clues: House, Library, Metro station and a Research Lab. The objective for the students was to determine what had happened to “Hunger City” and report back. I am updating this process with current tools in mind.

So, using the evidence presented in just the two scenes above what do you think happened to the denizens of “Hunger City”? There are many more scenes in the pipeline.

I am thinking of renaming “Hunger City”. What would you name this place? Mortopolis? The Place of the Dead? The Bleak?I would be happy to read your ideas.