An ice yacht is a sailboat on skates that travels 80 miles per hour. They were once the fastest vehicles on the planet.  Winters Past is a project that collects stories of the way that winters used to be, and brings these stories to life with audio soundwalks—meaning they should be heard outside, while walking. Read the full article here.

After a summer spent  collecting interviews, we're ready to show our project, Winters Past, to the world.  We're happy to say that our website, winterspast.org, is now online.  We spent a lot of time thinking about the design behind the site, and it's really helped us hone in on what we want the "message" of our undertaking to be. The project is meant to celebrate winter, while at the same time mourning the way that winter will be forever altered due to climate change.  We hope that both our icon and our logo convey that something is being lost, something is fading away.

We are doing a soft launch of the website right now.  It hints at the trio of soundwalks that we'll be releasing over the winter, and is intended to give visitors a good sense of what the project is about.  We'll be building out the site as we release more content, giving each walk its own page.

There will be space for additional audio as well: we're planning on several shorter pieces of audio (what we're referring to now as "mini episodes") that will be released in between the longer pieces. We will also be adding pages for users to submit content—written memories, photographs, links and comments.

Along with this, we'll be creating a social media presence (twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc) with the aim of building excitement for the project's official debut, scheduled for November.

Until then, we would love any thoughts about our web presence, and, of course, any favorite winter memories or stories!  You can reach us at info@winterspast.org

Winters Past is an audio project from the collaborative team of Isaac Kestenbaum and Josie Holtzman.  They will use soundwalks and podcasts during the 2013-14 New England winter to create a sensory experience to preserve the memory of what winter once was. 


WINTER IS CHANGING
What does winter mean to you?  That's the question we've been posing to most of the people we interview.  I have been amazed by the responses this question has elicited.  One woman spoke about how much she enjoys the experience of being cold—and the small joy that is coming in from the outdoors and warming oneself by a hearth.  We've heard memories of sledding, ice skating and even ice sailing. » Read More