| Screenshot from the DVD |
Bleeding Through - Layers of Los Angeles is an interactive, database-driven narrative that focuses on the day-to-day life of Molly, the female protagonist of the story. She lives in Downtown Los Angeles, in the Bunker Hill area and witnesses the transformations of the place over the years. From Molly's story the project zooms out and excavates the history and legends about the area of Los Angeles, building on a rich collection of archival materials, interviews, and re-photography. Navigating through this database the viewer can trace the events, people and places Molly never noticed, engaging with the ethnically complex reality of the area and its fictionalization in countless Hollywood movies. Bleeding Through - Layers of Los Angeles is an allegory of the process in which memory emerges as a distorted hybrid produced by historic documents, personal recollection, and imagination.
The project was realized as a collaboration between USC's Labyrinth Project, a research unit on interactive narrative, and the Center for Art and Media (ZKM) in Karlsruhe. It was exhibited as an interactive installation and published as a combination of an interactive DVD-ROM and a booklet containing Norman Klein's novella of Molly.
Norman Klein: writing, voice
Rosemary Comella: research, video- and photography, design
Andreas Kratky: database, interface design, research, re-photography, programming
Juri Hwang: sound and production management
Marsha Kinder: executive producer, editor
Jeffrey Shaw: editor
> Bleeding Through in the Collection of the Fondation Langlois