This is a collective digital media project realized in collaboration with an intrepid group of individuals who responded to an open call. Some are professional artists, though many are not. Beginning on July 18, 2016, I began extended hikes on two large sections of the Appalachian Trail, self-supported, north to south, including: 1) Katahdin, ME to Hanover, NH; and 2) Craig Creek north of Blacksburg, VA to Low Gap near Winchester, TN.
Each day of the journey, I collected media (still images, audio, and video). These media files were sent out periodically to everyone who had joined the project. Attached to the media was a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike International 4.0 license (also called CC BY SA 4.0) and my invitation and encouragement for everyone to edit, remix, mash-up, glitch, or make whatever else they’d like to make with the files as source material. The resultant new media was returned back to a project email and shared cloud storage with an agreement by the creator to apply that same Creative Commons license for their content, which, in turn, could be further re-imagined by the group.
This resulting, curated e-book exists as an expression of my physical adventure through this amazing mountain landscape, our collective artistic interaction, and a point-to-point celebration of the beautiful gift we all have in the these sections of the Appalachian Trail.
All sales of this e-book directly benefit a new non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, MountainTrotter, located in the New River Valley of southwestern Virginia. MountainTrotter is specifically focused on building creative, explorative communities across these Appalachian mountains in addition to global mountain communities like it. You can learn more about MountainTrotter by visiting mountaintrotter.net. I am really excited to be connected to MountainTrotter and its future of encouraging creativity in the mountains.
Christopher A. Miller, curator and editor
