Guerrilla Interpretation

Ted Lee EubanksPresidentFermata Inc.

In the Beginning…• The year is 1957. A journalist, playwright, novelist,

and radio scriptwriter has wandered the nation in search of interpretive meaning, of the greater truth beyond truth.

• Freeman Tilden’s charge is to study national park interpretation, and to devise a handbook for future interpreters-in-waiting.

• Tilden is 74 when the book is published in 1957, a child of the Progressive Movement addressing a Cold War audience.

In the Beginning…• U.S. Population: 171,984,130 (a little more than half of

what it is today)• Eveready produces “AA” size alkaline batteries for use

in “personal transistor radios.”• Sputnik is launched October 4, ushering in the space

age.• President Eisenhower sends federal troops to protect

the Little Rock Nine.• One thousand computers are sold.• Ages of Bill Gates and Steven Jobs? 2.

In the Beginning…• The same year, Marshall McLuhan, age 46, is teaching

communications and culture seminars at the University of Toronto.

• McLuhan’s revolutionary work will surface in the near future, with Understanding Media – The Extensions of Man to be published in 1964 and The Medium is the Massage in 1967.

• McLuhan argues that media are simply extensions of “human sense, bodies, and minds.” McLuhan will write that “everybody experiences far more than he understands. Yet it is experience, rather than understanding, that influences behavior.”

As it’s Become…• Currently, there are over 2 billion personal

computers in use worldwide.• Smartphones will grow from 2 billion today to 2.5

billion by 2019.• Over the same period of time, the number of

mobile phones (including smartphones) will grow to 5 billion.

• There are over 3.5 billion Internet users in the world.

As it’s Become…• In 2015, Uber, the world’s largest taxi company,

owned no vehicles.• Facebook, the world’s most popular media owner,

creates no content.• Alibaba, the world’s most valuable retailer, has no

inventory.• Airbnb, the world’s largest accommodation

provider, owns no real estate.

Fast Forward…FacebookWorldwide, there are over 1.79 billion monthly active Facebook users.Every 60 seconds on Facebook: 510 comments are posted, 293,000 statuses are updated, and 136,000 photos are uploaded. At 1.79 billion, Facebook has more monthly active users than WhatsApp (500 million), Twitter (284 million) and Instagram (200 million)—combined. Photo uploads total 300 million per day.

Everybody experiences far more than he understands. Yet it is experience, rather than

understanding, that influences behavior…Marshall McLuhan

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What if my life experiences have been largely virtual?

Everyman in the Virtual World• Everyman is an expert.• Everyman is an interpreter. • Every message has a chance of being heard before

atomizing into the void. • Everyman decides which pictures are worth keeping

(or creating), and Everyman chooses the frame based on comfort, familiarity, and popularity.

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Media

Message

The War of the Words

Message Medium

Interpretation

The Interpretive Balance

Knowledge

Technique and Technology

Opportunity

What is Interpretation?Interpreters connect visitors to important natural, cultural, and historical resources at parks, nature centers, historical sites, aquariums, zoos, and anywhere that people come to learn about places (NAI).

What is Interpretation?NAI defines interpretation as a mission-based communication process that forges emotional and intellectual connections between the interests of the audience and the meanings inherent in the resource.

Interpretation is an art…the true interpreter…goes beyond the apparent to the real, beyond a part to a whole, beyond a truth to a more important truth…

Freeman Tilden

It’s All About the Narrative

Going Guerrilla• How do we reform interpretive planning and

rekindle its relevance? • Can’t the same media that threaten to overshadow

our messages be harnessed to help us better connect with the public?

• Is a weblog or a QR code inherently different from a trail guide or interpretive sign? Isn’t our aspiration to go “beyond the apparent to the real” as potent today as in the time of Ozzie and Harriet?

• Do we really care which media are used as long as they effectively communicate our messages?

Going Guerrilla• How do we train interpreters to craft more effective

and compelling narratives?• How do we train interpreters to dig deeper into the

skills required to communicate our narratives?• How do we expand the boundaries of

interpretation so that it informs other disciplines and professions where narratives are increasingly recognized as being critical?

Going Guerrilla• Most people come to the profession from the mastery

of a resource rather than through a mastery of interpretation.

• Mastery of a specific resource or field is of limited value in guerrilla interpretation.

• A guerrilla interpreter is frequently confronted and challenged by an array of resources, often in the same project.

• The challenge for the interpreter is to find the thematic linkages that will pull them together into a coherent whole.

Going Guerrilla• Going guerrilla demands a degree of self-

containment and self-reliance.• Going guerrilla demands a mastery of

interpretation.• Guerrilla interpretation is a rapid fire, efficient, self-

contained approach that operates at the nexus of the new digital technologies and an interpreter’s skills.

It is the framework which changes with each new technology and not just the picture within the

frame...Marshall McLuhan

Technology is bought; skills are taught.

Going Guerrilla• Exactly what does an interpreter need to succeed?• Which skills are necessary to go guerrilla?• What is critical for a guerrilla interpreter is the

ability to work across broadest array of resources, and to have the skills to massage these disparate resources into a cohesive interpretive themed strategy.

Going Guerrilla…DeeperWhat are the specific skills that are critical to a guerrilla interpreter?

• Research• Inventory • Interpretive Design• Graphic Design• Illustration (including photography)• Interpretive Writing• Interpretive Technologies• Interpretive Planning • Personal Interpretation

Going Guerrilla• A guerrilla interpreter is a practitioner, not an

academician or a theoretician. Guerrilla interpreters work with people who are practitioners as well.

• An analogous field is journalism (and, not surprisingly, many early interpreters such as Freeman Tilden came from journalism). Journalists study editorial writing, headlines, ethics, and the like. Journalism is a craft, and it is taught by craftsmen.

• Interpretation is a craft as well.

Going Guerrilla• A guerrilla interpreter believes in the healing

powers of practice. Interpreters become better interpreters by interpreting.

• Hone your skills. Practice your craft. These are skills that practitioners need to become the best at their crafts and to stretch the horizons of the possible.

The past went that-a-way...We look at the present through a rear view mirror. We march backwards into the future…

Marshall McLuhan

Going Guerrilla• A guerrilla interpreter is media agnostic.• Media are not your children. If they no longer suit

the need, they are be thrown away and replaced.• Traditional media, such as printed guides and

interpretive signs, are of no more inherent value than an iPad or an app.

• Each has a role. Each has a specific user demographic, a specific set of interpretive attributes, and specific instances where the medium is the one of choice.

Going Guerrilla• While the messages may be timeless, the

interpretive platforms are transitory.• You must be able to nimbly hop from one platform

to another, staying focused on the content of the work rather than the platforms that are used to deliver that content.

• There is no medium that cannot be adapted to an interpreter’s uses.

Going GuerrillaGuerrilla interpretation confronts, pricks, and unsettles, using the panoply of media to cast interpretive messages wherever an audience lurks.

Going Guerrilla

A revolution is swirling around, but interpretation remains within its vortex, blithely unconcerned. Trainers worry more about which rubber toys to bring to their workshops than how to help interpreters avoid (or, at least, delay) displacement.

Going Guerrilla…Wider

If you aspire to being something more than a guide, or an usher, or a glorified bush beater, then you will need to provide something beyond finding things. You will need to find meanings. The moment that you cross that fine line between a thing and its meaning, you enter the rarefied air of interpretation.

Going Guerrilla…Wider

Narratives incorporating these meanings have relevance well outside of the traditional boundaries of interpretation.

…outside interests have a role in shaping cognition, through shaping the physical landscape, through interpretation of the

landscape…

Richard Stedman 2002

The interpretive framework includes not only an inventory of places and resources

(such as rare species or biodiversity) within a space, but also identifies a diversity of

meanings and values associated with each place.

Pennsylvania CLIsRecreational Planning

Caribbean Birding TrailConservation Planning

…individuals who are emotionally, cognitively, or functionally attached to a place will act to

protect that place.

…research has shown this is true in several different contexts including parks,

protected areas, and recreation landscapes.

…we are willing to fight for places that are more central to our identities…this is

especially true when important symbolic meanings are threatened by prospective

change…

Richard Stedman

McAllen, TexasPark Planning

Austin, TexasUrban Planning