 Morning everybody, so we'll get going here. I'm Neil Romanosky. I'm the Dean of Libraries, and it is my pleasure to welcome everyone this morning to our second installation of the Fall 2021 Graduate Research Series. So this series celebrates graduate students' research and their experience during that research process and also highlights the use of library and other research materials in the process. This series is collaboratively hosted by the University Libraries, the Graduate Student Senate, and Faculty Senate. And I just want to take a moment and extend my sincere thanks to the Graduate Research Series committee, which selects the speakers for the events, and to our Libraries Events Coordinator, Jen Harvey, for her work in making this all go off without a hitch. Thank you, Jen, for the committee. This morning I am very pleased to introduce Brian Costco, a third-year MFA student in communications. Brian will be presenting on his research for his master's thesis, through which he's bringing local Athens history to life, both through audio storytelling on his podcast, Invisible Ground, and through historic photos and augmented reality. The research has combined Brian's interest in local history in multimedia and through it he hopes to highlight local history in new ways to reach a wider audience. So Brian, welcome. I'm looking forward to your presentation. Well thank you so much, Dean. I appreciate the introduction. And I want to, before I get started, I want to thank Ohio University Libraries and Alden Library for hosting this series, and for Jen Harvey putting it together, as was mentioned there. You've been fantastic. And I also want to thank the OU Graduate Student Senate, along with the library, who sponsored this award and allow people like me to get a chance to talk about our research. I also want to thank all of you for being here today. I know we're virtual, but it's also still very exciting to have people who have chosen to come here and hear about my work in this topic and some of the exciting things that I've been going into these past couple years or so, and specifically these past few months. I get to speak to you about my thesis project, as mentioned, and a lot of the research involved with it. I'm going to do that for about 30 minutes or so here at the beginning, and then I'll be able to answer questions at the end. And I love questions, so I joked with Jen that I assume I'll probably have a bit more than I do with my first year undergrad class when we ask them if they have questions for anything. So please, if something I say kicks off a thought in your head, or you have a want some further explanation, so I'm going to write it down or put it in the chat and we'll be sure to get to it at the end. So I'm going to start off here in a minute by talking about myself and my MFA background, my academic background, and then I'm going to tell you a bit about Invisible Ground and my thesis project, and specifically, as I mentioned, the research into it. So I'm going to do that through the last little bit of my presentation by showing you a lot of photos actually that I've gathered, both from OU Libraries and other places. And I think for even people hearing about this for the first time, that's a really good way to dive into the story. Okay, so I'm going to do the old 2021 thing where I got to share my screen here. All right, so I can share my whole screen and then you should see my presentation. I think it looks visible on my end, but I always do like to ask. I just want to make sure that everyone can see that. I can see it, Brian. It looks great. Cool, wonderful. All right. And I'll get more into what this picture is here in a little bit. It might look familiar to some of you that know a bit of Athens history or for some of you maybe that walked up Court Street on your way to wherever you're going today or attended OU at any point. But I figured I should start with a bit of telling you about myself. And I really don't like to talk about myself too much, but I think it's somewhat essential and understanding kind of how I have arrived at this project and where I'm coming from with my work. So I was originally born in Lorraine, Ohio. I came to Athens in 2001 as an undergrad at Ohio University. So I have been here for just about a little over 20 years at this point. I graduated in 2006 with a social studies education degree from College of Education at OU. And I loved teaching. I loved history. Looking back now, that path sort of all makes sense. How I winded my way here. But at the time, I wasn't quite sure if that's what I wanted to do. And that was timing up with the fact that there wasn't a lot of social studies jobs. So I stuck around Athens a little bit as people do. I joked even in my notes here to mention that I at the time thought I was figuring some things out. In some ways, I think I'm still figuring things out just a little bit differently now. But at the time, I didn't quite know where I was going to end up or what I wanted to do, but I liked it here and I wanted to stay a little longer. So happened, as life does, that right after that, I met who would become my wife that summer. I started working in AmeriCorps that fall, which led me to Stuart's Opera House where I worked for as an AmeriCorps Vista for another two years, and then as their Marketing Director for 10 years after that. And really, it's that staying in Athens and delving into that community as part of my own development in my work and kind of finding my way that really sort of set me on this path. It was at Stuart's and working with the Nelsonville Music Festival as well that I started to realize that the combination of different things that I was interested in could happen in varying ways. And I started to explore these ideas in my own mind and in some of the work we were doing there that I was lucky to be a part of in combining community development and nonprofit work. And also, of course, working at a historic theater, I became sort of the de facto historian and person who gave tours and organized history nights and tried to keep track of some of the old documents we had and things like that. And that world of community art, music, history, and really doing amazing things and collaborating with different people is where we really started to come to light at that time. So around June of 2019, I did something that I recognize now, looking back, may have been a bit of a midlife crisis or at least the start of one. And that was that I decided that I wanted to think about going back to school. And in June of 2019, I did actually. So I started to think about it before then. And that was sort of based on this idea that I had a job that I absolutely loved. But I also had this itch that kind of kept coming up to start making things more on my own and start kind of diving into some territory that I had kept thinking about in the combination of these things. So I came back to school to figure some things out again. And I joined the MFA program at Scripps in the College of Communication. And it was sort of a natural fit for me. I got actually the paragraph here. There's not a lot of text in my presentation. I should say a lot of photos, but a little bit of text here at the beginning. But I felt like this was all very important stuff to give you an idea of where I was coming from. And that being that this program is designed as sort of an MFA media production program that draws from all of these different places, even in the schools that it works in. So those include the School of Visual Communication, Media Arts and Studies and the J. Warren McClure School of Emerging Communication Technologies. All kind of based in Scripps and the College of Communication, but also in conjunction with the School of Fine Arts. And also just in conjunction with a bit of academic freedom to go and explore programs in classes and work. Maybe that normal media program would not have explored or a fine arts program wouldn't have explored to the degree that we were producing media, right? So it's a three-year program where you develop creative production skills and you combine those with the context area. So this is kind of showing you how I got to where I where I ended up. My context area is public history, which is specifically history that's focused on being out in the community and stories of people, place. I love museums, I love history books, I love all of that stuff. But this concept of sort of history existing out in the community is always something that's very interesting to me and the connections that develop between local communities and bigger global and national events as a result. So that's my context area. And then I dove into audio storytelling and publication design, graphic design as my production areas in my program. And the other thing about the MFA program I should mention is that a lot of folks come to it from being mid-career creative professionals, right? So the fact that I was a little bit older, the fact that I had had this experience working at the Opera House and these other places was actually seen as sort of a benefit. It was, you know, when I was entering the program. And so that was something that made me feel a little more comfortable too about going into that world. So why did I come back to school? Well, I mentioned it a little bit already, but I wanted to answer in my creative work these questions that I was starting to have. This question that had brought me back to school in the first place, which was how do I use audio storytelling and visual design to make people more engaged in the history of their communities? I wanted to create a project where an audience could go into these stories using different media formats, right? At the time I wasn't quite sure what those were going to be. And I wanted work that impacted my community directly, that these new media tools that I was kind of picking and choosing and pulling from and these things that I was learning about could be something that could benefit Athens, County, Southeast Ohio. And more importantly, all of these people who have preserved these stories, who lived this history, and who have it to tell. So I started a podcast and an idea called Invisible Ground. And I started in September, I'm sorry, October of last year. And I've done three episodes. And it also turned into my thesis, which I'll get into in a minute. But I think it's important to kind of start with this here because this became a sort of laboratory for me. It was a chance to not only practice the skills I was learning with audio, recording and editing and storytelling and sound, right? And design, right? You see here, I have to pick photos. I have to think about logos. I have to think about how the branding looks. But it gave me a chance to start going into the work full on. And in a pandemic, it was actually a nice distraction in a way to be able to kind of really dive into this project. And it gave me a chance, again, like I said, to sort of have a laboratory to mess with some of these ideas and to start exploring things. And so I did three episodes. The podcast and my website is at findinvisibleground.com. But you can find the show anywhere you listen to podcasts already. So Apple Podcast, Google, Spotify, Audible, any of those kind of places. And here it is on Apple. Subscribe, rate and review. It is not a lie. It really helps, especially for a graduate student who does not have a marketing budget for his podcast. But yeah, you know, those things do go a long way. You can see here, there was three episodes. I'm working on the fourth at the moment. The three that I did, I started with two cemeteries, West State Street Cemetery here in Athens and Mount Cemetery in Marietta. And then the last episode I did about six weeks ago or so, the main feature was Tabler Town, which is a settlement in Eastern Athens County. And a few other kind of assorted stories were in that one as well. And I should mention, as a nice little segue as we get into the photos, you're looking at a photo on the left here with West State Street Cemetery that is from the W. E. Peters Collection. I'll tell you a bit more about him in a minute, but that is from all the library digital archives. And that's the gate that's still there at West State Street Cemetery. And then of course, Mount in Marietta was an interesting place because it is a historic cemetery, but it also has, as you can see here, a very large Adina conus mount in the middle of it. So just to give you an idea of kind of the storytelling and starting to move into how the visuals and the research help me tell these stories and give them life, because that's kind of where I want to shift a little bit of my focus to. I've got other stuff to talk about as well, but this to me is where the research and the libraries and preservation of these documents and photos and stories really come into play. On the left here is another photo West State Street Cemetery also from W. E. Peters from that same collection. This is actually looking at, as far as I know, the alley that runs next to West State Street Cemetery towards what you would know as First Street and then Lancaster, which turns into Columbus Road. But it's just a beautiful photo. A couple of stones obviously in the left and foreground of the photo, but you can see it's still the same fence that's there, the hills in the distance. And then one of my favorite ones I found in the archive, one of my favorite photos that I found in the whole time in doing this is this one on the right of W. E. Peters, who was a local Athens lawyer, historian, researcher, surveyor, kind of jack of all trades, not master of none, kind of master of all of the trades that he jumped onto. And Peters besides preserving a ton of history, he is the one who paid for the stones in West State Street Cemetery that have inscriptions and stories on them of certain individuals, including famous black settlers of Athens like Andrew Jackson Davidson and even other amazing stories such as formerly enslaved people who had arrived in Athens and changed their name all the way up to Silas Bingham, who was an early OU, supporter whose cabins over across from the convo and who rode on the ship with George Washington crossing the Delaware. But you also might know Peters and this just shows all these stories combined as well the guy whose house is behind BW3 in Athens. So if you ever wonder why there's a house poking out of there, that's W. E. Peters house and office where he originally worked. And here he is on the right feeding squirrels in front of what I believe is either Chubb Hall or Ellis Hall in 1947. I think it is Ellis but then lately I've started to doubt that. But I find Peters shows up in a couple of his photos and I just find them fascinating because I think that you know 70 some years ago here's someone that's taking a bit of a selfie in a way on College Green just along with everyone else nowadays. The other thing before I get into my actual thesis and that research I wanted to show you just one more really awesome thing I found in the archive related to West State Street Cemetery. And this one really combined all my interests. This was kind of the moment where I realized I was probably onto something. This is the Tombstone Tall Tales from Mrs. Grooms' 7th grade class at Athens Middle School and it's kind of a zine about the cemetery. Okay, so how does this turn into a thesis project? Well I basically wanted to figure out how to tell those stories of invisible ground using visual and multimedia elements. How could I do what I've done on the podcast and bring people in further? So the thesis is an artist led multimedia project that combines audio, augmented reality, visual elements and place based storytelling to engage people in this history. And I do this through augmented reality historic markers. So the idea is that you will download an app, the invisible ground app, go to a designated place where there'll be a sign that has a QR code on it that explains what's going on. You can zap that sign with your phone and then you will be able to access an augmented reality view of that historical site over top of your camera view. Another way to explain it is like Pokemon Go for history. How I've explained it a few times though obviously a little bit different but the same idea that you're bringing this world into your actual reality through your phone and therefore immersing yourself a bit more into the story. For the first marker in this series and for my thesis I'm creating this at the former site of the Berry Hotel on Court Street in Athens which is what you saw in that first photo. So along with an overlay of the historic building I'll be playing short audio stories which I'm developing that'll be there for the user to listen to. Those will be shorter pieces but beyond that they can dive in further to a full podcast episode, more photos and resources and all of that will be on the website and it's a nice way to kind of have the podcast and this project move along together. Curriculum will also be developed for area students and I'm working with the Southeast Ohio History Center on this project and so they already have some programs that are wonderful with third and fourth graders throughout the county and I look forward to kind of having this which I think is an accessible way to you know get especially young people involved in these stories and realizing that the places that they walk by every day to contain a lot of history. Here's the site and you see the beautiful there is a beautiful historic marker there already but you know it's attached to a restaurant at the moment. It tells the unbelievable story of Edward and Maddie Berry which I'll get to here in a minute as I show you the rest of the slides and so it's a great marker but you know we're talking about a really impressive building here and I'm going to show you some photos from it that I've gathered from the libraries and from the archives and Tom O'Grady who's longtime director of the Southeast Ohio History Center and still works very closely with them has always told me that the more you know about a place the more important it becomes you know the more that you have a sense of why something matters all of a sudden your view on that changes and it seems like such a simple concept but I don't believe that it is I think sometimes people require a bit of a nudge to get there. So I think the best way to show you the rest of this presentation and talk about my work here for the next 10 15 minutes or so is to really just start showing you all of these photos and other things newspaper articles clippings notes that I've sort of gathered so far. The tech part of this project is a whole another fascinating thing. I can thank my good friend and colleague Akbar Saltanov. Akbar has helped me a ton with the coding and augmented reality portion on this project and making me make sense of that. That is the part that I was not as familiar with. I know a lot more now but Akbar has been a huge help there. For this you know I think we could do a whole separate one about how Akbar managed to make a building appear and then I'm trying to figure out how to turn it into an app in a process that people can use but I thought for the GRS that focusing instead on the research element of the storytelling and the project itself and the place was sort of the best way to give you a sense of why I wanted to do it this way. Visual storytelling to me is such an important method of getting across information and when it comes to historical photos and maps I think that they provide that same you know connection to people. So let's look at some pictures. Okay these first few oh well actually here. This is me after I reached out to Bill Kimock at the library. Thank you Bill you're incredible. I got to do something that any nerd and any grad student and any lover of any topic that they're diving into would be very excited to do which is I got to go spend the day at the library and what's amazing I'm going to say this I'm not just saying this because I'm here doing something for the library. That's what they are there to do. It was amazing I talked to Bill about my project through email. I had done some diving on my own into the digital archives of course over the years but he understood my project and what I was after and I got to show up there and have an appointment and be in a room by myself and safe and go through this unbelievable cart of documents that Bill put together for me and so this is a photo just of me kind of sitting down at that table of several folders and a ledger and a couple other things here. This photo I first saw courtesy of Ada Adams and I think it was also David Butcher who's fantastic other resource for local history too. It was involved in some of the photos that he had and Ada had and this is actually Edward Berry's 1893 ice cream shop and I may have mentioned this before but Edward and Maddie Berry were black and I think that that is essentially a really important part of this story. I bring that up because we are talking about 1893 here in a county in Ohio that borders the Ohio River you know that formerly bordered slave states. I think even further than that both of the berries both Maddie and Edward you know their parents had been born enslaved in the south and so there's a lot going on here and a lot that's really important in understanding both Athens history and these stories which are crucial to lift up in our community but also in how we connect to these bigger stories of race and economic development and early black settlements especially in southeast Ohio a place where I don't believe that is viewed sometimes as being a place that may have been as diverse as it was especially at this time and so this is the humble beginnings and I would argue not so humble based on everything I just said but the beginnings of Edward Berry's business he made really good ice cream him and Maddie and they were of course both educated at the Albany Enterprise Academy as well there's a black school in Albany Ohio and so you're really getting a generational change in this family where you're moving from enslaved parents who have managed to get to Ohio have their children go get educated at this wonderful school in Albany and then Edward here is then turning around opening a business and becoming successful developing wealth developing status in the community now it's not all roses of course and I'll get into that there's plenty of terrible racism and awful things that were happening especially to Edward in the hotel but it's a story of perseverance and of really generational movement that big change can happen so that ice cream shop as you can see here gets a lot bigger and slowly Edward and Maddie who both have a talent for all the parts of running this hotel and restaurant keep expanding and the Berry becomes known not just in Athens and Ohio but nationally the hotel and Edward and Maddie end up in a book by Booker T Washington about early black businesses he becomes known as the first hotel to give people amenities certain amenities at least a sewing kit in every room bibles these kind of things that like happen at every hotel now the first place some of those things happen was the berry and this shot's great because there's two buildings in it too that are still at Court Street in the present day you see the Presbyterian church down there in the Athens news building as well formally Athens news building to the right the photo each one of these photos too you know when you start to really dive into them they really do transport you there's people in here there's transportation there's change of the scenery around the hotel right and then of course changes to the hotel itself this is obviously from you know I'm not sure exactly but some sort of I'm guessing a Memorial Day or a Veterans Day some sort of celebration you know you have a lot of flags and scarfs things like that I love this one just because of the men out front to the woman on the balcony and you can see some of this really intricate design in the building too you know these were not this was not a you know modern chain hotel you're talking about stained glass and balconies intricate brickwork everywhere and I might add wonderful typography on the on the window there I'd be remiss as a designer if I didn't point that out I love though it's all berry logo there and I shouldn't say too I got a lot of these from that the OU archives but but doing a project of this nature the library has been an incredible resource but I mentioned Ada Adams the multicultural Geological Center in Chester Hill Mount Zion you know the people who are involved in preserving black history in this area and who are these these unbelievable resources for these just really as I said I I know I keep saying this but it's these are important stories and and they're things that are important for people in Athens and people in our area to know and I think again that there's a huge connection to these bigger issues but also the southeast Ohio History Center and little cities of black diamonds you know these are all places that were really helpful in this research here you see Edward and Maddie Martha Jane on the right I feel like I can call her Maddie because I've been spending so much time in this world but but I also know that if it was real life I would call her Miss Barry I would not call her Maddie so it does seem to be very informal but even these are just incredible portraits of these people and I have two other ones from later on here's the ballroom inside the berry I believe this is about early 1900s I think 1908 again just an incredible photo I think that visual storytelling and historical photography is an area that can be explored a lot more too it's something that's really exciting to me we all know that there's important historical photos there's all things that you know have an impact but yeah the storytelling that's in these is incredible so two more things that I really liked I found in the OU archives on the left here is a guest book from from 1902 from the berry and it's a real live guest book this was not just a page from it that is the ledger that you saw it's handwritten again with just amazing graphic design coming at it from that point of view but also just an incredible document to be able to look with gloves go through something that's 120 years old here on the right is a menu from an event at the berry in January 1930 of 1930 right before Edward died in 31 featuring Sammy K and his 10 Ohioans Sammy K of course going on to be a very famous big band leader this is really early in his career he went to OU here it's listed as the 10 Ohioans but everywhere else it's the Ohioans and then it immediately changes to his group that he became more famously known by but it's just amazing to see the the the menu here the food from what I've been told by people who have connections to to the berries but also what I've read in reviews and documents the food was absolutely incredible at this place at the hotel and that that was that food in the hospitality were really what I think led to its success here's an ad from 1938 advertising the hotel you see it they're up top with the big sign and this would have been after obviously Edward had passed I believe Maddie still owned it at this time was not sold off yet but you can see them pushing the coffee shop as well in this ad here's another one of those photos that you know could be worth thousands and thousands of words 1940s cocktail lounge at the berry with some very very cool stools and some intense looking people here it is in the 50s again the kind of little accidents in these old photos I absolutely love this old ambassador laundry's truck ambassador still on Stimson Avenue there of course and you could tell you know this is a little bit more in the 50s obviously due to the cars and just kind of the you know layout it looks to be around Christmas too and I found I'm going to go through these a lot quicker as I kind of start to wrap up I found a lot of articles too you know the amazing thing about the berry is this history has been recorded many times you know I should say it's very important for me to note that I'm just trying to amplify these stories and approach them through another format give them another way to exist you know I am not inventing the wheel by any stretch and I come here literally on the coattails of people who have devoted their life to this work to help give a new presentation of it that's it and so I came across so many wonderful articles and people you see here you know they were all in the archive telling this story and it was a story I was familiar with of course before I got into this but the detail each one of these you know each one of these magazine or newspaper articles contains some element something that was new something that gave a little bit more personality to the story and a little bit more character to everybody and it was really really fun to go through I can't stress the fun of it enough and it's been hugely helpful in thinking about my audio stories and my work and how I want to present this so getting a little bit ahead of myself maybe let's go to this first actually and you see the berries here a little bit later in life in the photo in the bottom right uh Edward and Martha Jane but you also see Mount Zion Baptist church up above it and the berries organized and helped to raise money to build Mount Zion and from what I understand also don't you know Edward donated a lot of money towards that cause but also was really important to you know rallying people behind it as well and raising more money and it is there you know Mount Zion is again an unbelievable place and you should all find out about all the incredible work that they're doing to preserve that building and its history and beyond that turned it into a black cultural center here in Athens it's much needed but thinking about it even in that term you know going back to these are these Edward and Maddie obviously later in their life at this point but our children of enslaved people who have built a successful business and they are now taking that money that wealth the generation of wealth they have and putting it back into a space that's needed and necessary for the black community in Athens and I find that to be a pretty incredible story of a few generations and for those familiar with Mount Zion the house next to it the beautiful brick house on Congress was the Barry's home which they also built after that he sold the hotel in 21 and they built the house there right adjoining Mount Zion and I've heard some wonderful stories about this place too. Martha Jane lived there for many years after Edward's death and it is now the Phi Kappa Theta house and they preserved the history they've maintained it. There's Edward and Maddie again and then in closing kind of the last part of the Barry's story is you know the unfortunate one well this we get into that here it's why it's not there anymore and so it becomes you know after Barry sells it in 21 it gets sold to a syndicate it eventually gets sold to another group of local business people and I must point out too that one of the most devastating and also one of the most least surprising unfortunately things is that right after it is sold by Edward Barry that hotel goes back to being a whites only hotel. So you talk about local stories and the impact the things that a small story can tell you about American history right and to me I think you can sum up a lot of the terrible way that we have treated people of color in this country by hearing what I just said that this this man and his wife against all odds and against the face of racism managed to build this amazing business in this community and not even weeks after he is not charge of it anymore it is a whites only establishment after eventually that doesn't work after so many years the hotel falls on harder times it's eventually acquired by Ohio University and they turned it into a dorm you see here on the right is the plaque for it and that's a whole another part of this story it's one that I'm not going to get into a ton in here this is John Enlo on the left I don't know who John is but I had to include this photo it might be a little blue for an academic presentation but these are from a scrapbook of the residence of Barry Hall from the late 60s and again totally separate from Edward Barry in the black history part of this it's kind of amazing to see how college in 1968 is a lot like college in 2021 or 2001 or 1975 or whatever so there's a lot of photos of of guys partying and hanging out with with ladies and probably drinking too much and playing a lot of sports but also you know this sort of competition between halls and dorms and for sporting events and extracurriculars you see here because the Barry was a dorm that had a ballroom and a restaurant they would have bigger events so there's president Alden I don't know words banquet there and that's in the Barry in the ballroom but this book was also fascinating because it just showed that you know this this building had so many different lives here's some more photos of the students in the Barry and then of course you know that ran its course it was a very old building you know they had had sort of you know it was not built to be a dorm I think that had worked for a while though you didn't need the space anymore and they wanted to get rid of it and as with most things in a small town that becomes kind of complicated right so I'm not going to get too much into that today but this was also something that was very fascinating to see in the archives and I think told an important part of the story the city eventually buys it and works with OU to purchase it you know there's there's debate on council but what to do with it they wanted to make it a parking lot so yeah I could say some things about that but I think you know how I probably feel you know these are the reasons why I want to see this building come back to life even if it's through an augmented reality app right you see here on the right that's the rubble from the site it's being sold as a commercial lot at that point and these two photos are pretty incredible too one we had a belk I don't know if anyone remembers that but this is this is would be right where the parking lot's located across the street now on the right and those are doors from the hotel which are pretty incredible just leaning up against there this photo on the left is on Schaefer Street I believe that's the hospital in the background so they actually had so much rubble from the hotel in the building they had to have a separate site and then they had information as well on the plaque unveiling and the wonderful ceremony involved with it I'm going to take questions here in a minute but I felt like while that was kind of quick it was a good way to get everyone an idea of of how research and photos have informed my story and kind of how I'm trying to use that to make this project more real I'll leave this up for a minute as we gather questions and people kind of get settled but I do got to give the few quick thank yous and plugs you can find it my podcast as I mentioned on findinvisibleground.com it's also on Apple Spotify Google and I have a Patreon page as well if you're interested in supporting the project you can find out more there I want to thank Ohio University archives and and all of their associated collections I see a misspelling here as well as the multicultural genealogical center Ada Adams David Butcher and Southeast Ohio History Center for the photos my thesis committee there thank you Josh Julia Tom and Chip for always giving me guidance and help and I want to thank as I mentioned everyone involved with putting on this presentation and all of you for coming and with that I'm going to hand it over to Jen and also get ready to take some questions I think thank you so much Brian that was that was fascinating so we are going to open it up for audience questions at this point we've got two options for you if you'd like to use the raise hand feature you're more than welcome to and then you know I'll call on you you can unmute yourself and ask Brian your question directly or if you'd like to type it in the chat I'm more than happy to moderate that and we actually already have a question in the chat so we're wondering why if you had come across anything indicating why the city didn't consider keeping the Bay Area as a historic landmark building yeah I mean there's a lot in there in those articles I delved a little bit into it I have to be honest of you know I think sometimes when you're trying to tell something it's brought the story that was a part that I I didn't go into too much yet also maybe that's part of the historian block right is that I'm like I kind of know the story right it's no knock on the city or anybody you know it was that it was in bad shape it would cost more to fix probably than it would be worth and again you know it's the 70s and Athens 60s and 70s and Athens are a very different time than now this this town this university were exploding with the people and I'm not in any way justifying what they did but I think that that parking instead of you know a four floor dilapidated you know older hotel was probably more of a concern unfortunately yeah I'd hope we do it differently now but I also know we probably would I would hope so too so we have another question in the chat is do you have an ideal audience for your thesis project how can your project be incorporated into the classroom yeah that's a great question I think that is my ideal audience I love the idea of young people of relating to this I think history sometimes can seem like a very distance thing and part of the podcast and part of the approach I've taken here is I really want to connect those dots for people people in the community but I think students are a great way to start that you know I think that it the AR component the app part the tech part the audio is sort of the shiny carrot in a way it's a way that makes it exciting for young people I hope at least especially in this case with the building that's not actually there anymore and as far as curriculum yes it's a huge part of doing this in the classroom and so I have lots of background in education my undergrad was in social studies that I teach a lot at my MFA so that has to be a part of it for me so I am developing curriculum for there'll be a curriculum for the Berry hotel site that will get through the history center will get out to the third and fourth graders in Athens and in the county and anyone else who wants it frankly you know adults too awesome thank you okay Lorraine did you have a question you wanted to ask I do um Brian that was just fabulous Brian did I see you do a gig in Shawnee was that you okay it wasn't you um maybe I'm known to do gigs okay I don't want to show my ignorance here but so cool about staying in a hotel that was run by African Americans in the late 1800s turn of the century do we know like I just seems like wow people were accepting and then as you noted earlier it turned into whites only and I guess I would need to delve further into my history research to see like what was that schism that made that happen and I was curious so whites didn't have any problem with the fact that the owners were black at the time or is there history saying well they might have had a problem so I'm just curious it's complicated I think it's probably easiest way it's probably also super complicated I'll give the disclaimer you know as a white man in 2021 talking about what I might perceive that to be but I do think that probably as often when it comes to racism and issues that stem from that you know I would imagine some folks were fine with it like you're saying Lorraine that maybe they're you know we think of Athens as a progressive place it was not always like that you know but there was always still that element you know there were people there were black students being accepted to OU there were people here in the community in the black community who were doctors and lawyers and strong community members of the time so it existed you know and was accepted and and was there to some degree that being said I think sometimes probably for people maybe that were more racist than that it would be viewed as the exception right I think sometimes that's kind of the rule like oh this hotel is nice but that's not how I feel about everyone else and that's really unfortunate and it gets what I mean by the complicatedness is not only the racism there and the history which is super complicated I think even among the berries you know Edward I think he wanted to be he was obviously you can't separate those two things but everything I read about him he was such a genius businessman an unbelievable worker and a visionary and I don't think he wanted to be seen as a black hotel in the way that he just didn't want that to be a gimmick I think he saw himself as having one of the best hotels in the country black white blue green whatever and so there's an element of that too you know he was always behind the scenes and everything I read and I think that was because he was that kind of person but I also think you know that was how he approached the business if that makes sense but yeah I think it it's it shows the complexity of time and it shows that I'll tell you what to the 50s 60s and 70s in northern states are who you want to see some racism so that doesn't surprise me that after all of that that it would have been a whites only hotel that's what you know it's it's very unfortunate I think it's horribly ironic but it is America unfortunately I think too thank you thanks Brian so while I'm waiting for another question I'm going to drop a link in the chat for our audience to a short survey about today's program I did share earlier the direct link to Brian's website so you should be able to scroll up and find that if you wouldn't mind taking a minute just letting us know what you thought about today's program and we'll wait for just another minute or two and see if we have any other questions coming in in the meantime I want to thank you so much for such a wonderful and engaging presentation that was I learned a lot this morning and I really really appreciate it Brian thank you I'm always glad to talk about this stuff and so I think I was telling someone on my committee the other day I think sometimes when you work on this it's very insular and so it's cool to hear questions and talk to people about it looks like we have more we do we have Miranda did you want to ask your question Brian thank you for this excellent presentation I'm curious if you could say a little bit about how you feel like projects like this and this media work can help to bring visibility to the next set of decisions that communities and universities are making because it feels like you're bringing to lights and really key issues and ideas about our reflection on history but you have any thoughts about how we bring this forward and have a forward-looking lens as well yeah that's a great question Miranda you know preservationism comes very quickly in this story you know I mean in this project and the approach to it and so I think that there's potential you know I'm exploring I should mention to you that the plan is while I have to give the huge disclaimer that I'm working on this one for my thesis and that's the focus right now the plan is to hopefully keep doing these and so that community interest and the development of those stories and reasons for doing it will continue but I think you hit on it which preservation and having knowledge right the education of of what is important in these spaces and why is huge in telling those stories and bringing to light those things and so even in the podcast you know even separate from this visual and AR component I am trying as much as I can to focus on stories of of that don't get told as often or maybe don't get told in that platform as often so stories of people of color of women of LGBTQ communities labor communities immigrants working class so I think the same approach is true with those buildings in that history you know that there's a lot wrapped up in all of those things those stories and those people I think going back to what I mentioned about Tom Tom's quote of more importance right of knowing something I think that's kind of it to me I think that this new technology can be something that can make younger people more interested it brings it into a way you know it's no longer in the museum it's no longer something that will get them to the museum I think eventually I think that that's the other thing is that an act like this that's something you can look at for 20 seconds at a building and find out what it was and what it did and even listen to slightly longer audio pieces and then dove into a podcast and then all of a sudden the hope is you know in a perfect world the perfect audience you're at the history center and you're in the library you're looking at photos you're out at David's place in Tabler Town looking at his incredible artifacts you're giving money to people like MGC and Mount Zion because those are the people that are doing that work but I think you're right I think that my hope you know without sounding too full of a project that hasn't happened yet is that this causes people to look at their these spaces and what's important in their community differently yeah we do have a couple more questions and I'm sure more than one person is wondering this one how can we help test the augmented reality work yeah all seriousness that will be happening soon and I need all sorts of people for that I'm hoping that by the end of January early February there's you know it'll be version 3.0 by then or so but that there'll be something where I can do some test runs because that's the most important it could be the coolest idea ever it could be the coolest tech ever I could be the greatest storyteller ever if you point this thing your camera at this building and you know nothing appears or a big X appears or you don't hear the audio or something doesn't seem intuitive you know so for me right now I'm really heavy at this point have been for a little bit but now we're really focused in this next month or two on that user experience on the design of how someone is going through this I have lots of sketches I've done a little bit of work but I'll be heading into that soon and so if you're interested reach out to me either through my OU email or findinvisibleground at gmail.com works too just go to that website message me on Facebook uh Instagram and I'll make sure that when it's ready I get it to you I just will ask you lots of questions in return about how it made you feel and if you got angry all right I think we have one last question here in the chat that we have time for uh let's see with your research have you found any large gaps within our the libraries uh digital archives where you've had to go elsewhere to find the information um yeah but that's to be expected I think you know the cool thing about the OU archives is that because this was a university building because it was a building of prominence in Athens you have a lot of information about it not just from the photos and things that I saw but it's mentioned in the W. E. Peters you know in papers it's mentioned in other places there's this cool dorm book that being said talking to Ada Adams talking to David Butcher talking to uh T4 talking to all these people who were involved with Mount Zion and in really essential people for black history in this community has opened up the rest of the stories you know that's when I'm hearing Ada tell me about how her her mother knew Martha Jane Barry um and when she graduated from OU in the 30s she would go went visit her when she had her kids she went and took them to her um where you hear about David telling me that why his wife's ancestors and relatives worked at the Barry right um you get those little bits Pete Kotsas who ran an Athens bicycle um told me that his dad was a professor at OU and ended up with the mailing system in the psychology department I believe the mailing system from the Barry um so you get the those are the things you get elsewhere um but this part and what I showed you is really that essential foundation of kind of understanding the timeline and what it was where it was who was involved um and so that's sort of that foundation that then I can start to build like what are those stories what are those connections what else am I missing excellent well I think on that note I think we're going to wrap it up for this morning um thank you again Brian it was it was wonderful and I look forward to speaking with you again yeah thank you too and thanks everyone for coming to this um yes thank you everyone