Streets as hyperfiction

This is such an interesting idea: a story told in stencils on the streets of San Francisco, with the locations of the stencils (an apartment building, a street with hills behind it, a burrito joint) acting as a kind of illustration or setting for the story. And it’s a hypertextual "Choose Your Own Adventure" type of story, to boot.

Is it my current obsession with all things place-specific and geographically-based, or is this part of a trend? My first thought, when I read about the San Francisco stencil fiction, was of locative art. Stencils are lower-tech than GPS, but the basic idea — using the environment as an intrinsic and crucial part of the work — sounds a lot like what people are doing in other media.

Now I want someone to try this in Philadelphia. Especially if the story can somehow incorporate the local mystery of the Toynbee tiles.

(Link thanks to if:book.)

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