Week #1 Cultures of Wonder-Book and Exhibit

This is one of my favorite ideas. I’ve been kicking it around for almost five years and some of you might have already heard about it. I think it’s a good one to start out with since it’s one I really can’t ever do entirely on my own but it would be a shame if it never got done.

The basic idea is this: To invent a series of whole new “undiscovered” cultures. First we’d make up everything we can think of about these cultures; traditions, history, diet, religion and whatever else we come up with.

Then we write a sort of pseudo-anthropological article about each of them complete with an account of how they stayed undiscovered for so long and how they then where discovered. Along with the account there will be sort of national geographic photographs of the cultures. I’d also like to build physical objects (tools, art, clothing) that where created by the cultures.

The eventual outcome as I see it would be both a book and hopefully a traveling exhibit. The book I picture is sort of like a Time/Life book with lots of pictures, drawings and diagrams. The exhibit would be like a natural history museum exhibit that we could move easily from gallery to gallery.

The stylistic idea would be to make all the cultures as believable as possible without sacrificing any of the fantastical elements of the project. I’ll need tons of collaborators to pull this off; Writers, sculptors, photographers, artists and really just anyone who can contribute to the idea. This is one of the ideas I feel very attached to so I’d like to remain sort of in charge of it but I would love it if someone else wanted to help me produce it as well.