A digital-historical adventure about the relationship between New York and Amsterdam.

PROGRAM New York City, September 12, 2009
Opening 9.00am at 60 Pine street NYC (at the same time in Amsterdam) Click here for the storyboard  

Video presentation: www.waag.org/project/island

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The project
 
The year 2009 will mark the 400th anniversary of the voyage of Henry Hudson to the New World and the charting of the river that bears his name. As Hudson traveled on behalf of the Dutch, this will be the occasion of a year-long celebration of the beginning of Dutch-American relations, with dozens of events taking place on both sides of the Atlantic. The anniversary is the inspiration behind The Island, a new digital frontier through which high school students will experience history.
 
The Island will comprise a virtual 17th century world, in which students from New York and Amsterdam interact at sea, in Old Europe and in the wilderness of the New World. It will be a treasure hunt and a series of games, with students solving puzzles in order to get to the next level. It will be radically multidimensional, with students working via cell phones, with computers and on the streets of Amsterdam and New York. The Islandwill have a "game leader," who will spread clues via the worldwide web on community sites such as Facebook, Hyves, Flickr and You Tube.

As a precursor to The Island, in June 2008 the Waag Society organized, during the New York Come Out & Play Festival, the game Fort Amsterdam www.fortamsterdam.org, in which students assumed the identities of British colonists, Dutch colonists and native American Indians in a GPS adventure about the fight for Fort Amsterdam. The Dutch history of New York came to life on the southern tip of Manhattan, precisely where the original Dutch colony stood. An expanded version of Fort Amsterdam - with games taking place simultaneously in New York and Amsterdam - will comprise another episode of The Island.

The Island will be based around a centralized website, where also exciting previews of up coming levels will be shown, and where students and the teachers can follow how other players are progressing.

Project Organization
The Island is a coproduction of the John Adams Institute and the Waag Society, both located in Amsterdam. The Waag Society www.waag.org is a media lab that develops creative technologies for social innovation and has long experience in the field of education and digital projects. The John Adams Institute www.john-adams.nl is the center for American culture in Amsterdam.

Other partner organizations, located in New York, will provide coordination and support. They include The New School for Social Research, The New Design School, the "Teaching American History" project, Area Code and Zoomlab. To start, at least three Dutch schools and three American schools will participate in The Island. Two representatives chosen from the participants - one Dutch and one Americam - will become project advisers.
 
The project has 3 phases:
Phase One: November 2008 to March 2009. The project will be defined by the partner organizations and additional funds will be explored. Discussions will be held with the schools about how to fit The Island into the school curriculum and how many students can participate.
 
Phase Two: March 2009 to September 2009. The Island will be developed. The design and the content of the game will be created, workshops in schools will be organized, the website will be built. In April 2009, a presentation will be held during the "Hudson Year" festivities in Amsterdam. In May 2009 a pilot of the game will be presented during a special edition of the Amsterdam Picnic Cross Media festival. The Island then will start in September 2009. and will be unveiled in Amsterdam at Picnic 2009 and amid "Hudson Year" events in New York.
 
Phase Three: September 2009 to February 2010. The Island will run in schools in Amsterdam and New York. Students will cooperate with their counterparts across the Atlantic, advance through different levels of The Island, and race toward the thrilling conclusion.
 
Finally, The Island is being developed with the idea that it will continue beyond 2009. Future versions, with content adaptation and changes of storyline, can be applied to other cities, regions and historical periods.