With the benefit of hindsight, I can now pinpoint when the idea for this CD-ROM title began to emerge. It was the day Cheryl Rhodes and I watched a documentary entitled "It Was 20 Years Ago Today" made by Granada Television of England. That documentary - one of the best I'd ever seen that combined rock music with interesting commentary - contained an interesting segment about the Haight-Ashbury that combined visual effects, Grateful Dead music, and interviews with key people from the Sixties period.
I've read a lot of rock music books and watched quite a few videos and Sixties-related documentaries, but "It Was 20 Years Ago Today" is extraordinary, and its outsider's perspective of the Haight-Ashbury is different, but more worldly, than the typical American cultural perspective.
At that time (was it 1991? '92?) we'd been thinking about producing a CD-ROM title about the Haight-Ashbury period, and had started contacting friends of friends, etc., who could help us get in touch with the S.F. rock groups including the Grateful Dead, the Jefferson Airplane, and Big Brother.
The idea had been sparked by a visit to San Francisco, where we saw (for the second time) a slideshow by our friend Allen Cohen about the Haight-Ashbury and the S.F. Oracle. We knew Allen from the early 1980s, and knew some of the people involved with the Oracle Facsimile Edition. We had talked many times about putting his slideshow of photos and images, and other materials from the Oracle, on CD-ROM.
The complete idea for this CD-ROM title did not come together until we had put the elements together: slideshow, music, video clips, topical access to different scenes in the show, the ability to create your own show, and so on. We also flashed on other elements that would fit, such as excerpts from Ken Kesey's Prankster archives, and the music we were listening to at the time - The Grateful Dead's Anthem of the Sun album.
Even so, there was still something missing. An interactive medium needs more user participation. The "game" aspect, I felt, was crucial in establishing this CD-ROM title as a meaningful experience that could not be delivered in any other medium.
My partners and I hashed out many ideas for a Haight-Ashbury game. You can just imagine. We experimented with the "exploring a space" metaphor, but we didn't want users to have to constantly maneuver around streets and knock on doorways. Rather than recreating the Haight-Ashbury as a physical environment, we decided to provide a game that acted more like an Oracle. Jim Collins, the art director and chief programmer for the CD-ROM, designed and implemented the game, which is loosely patterned after the game of life.
The project took more than four years, and every bit of that time was needed to complete the licensing of content as well as the creative and development phases. Licensing for multimedia is a tricky issue, and our project spanned a period in the history of CD-ROM in which the largest recording companies in the music industry were hesitant and uncertain with regard to music licensing.
We thank Grateful Dead Records and Ice Nine Publishing for having the foresight and courage to license their music for this project, and in doing so, helping us to establish a reasonable licensing structure for the rest of the music. We also thank the other record and music publishing companies for licensing music to enrich this product. And we thank the over 100 artists, writers, photographers, musicians, and archive organizations that chose to be involved with this title. They are listed in the booklet.
Another aspect of this project that deserves mention is the fact that we did not try to resurrect the original S.F. Oracle in its original form. That has already been done in the print medium, in the hard-bound Oracle Facsimile Edition co-published by Allen Cohen and Regent Press. If you want the original art, this is where you'll find it.
Since it is nearly impossible to reproduce the colors and textures of the printed page on a computer screen, we didn't strive for that. We wanted to convey the emotion and experience of the Sixties. Each one of the images in this title deserves to be reproduced in full color and high resolution, perhaps in other titles focused on the art and photography of the period. The poster art, for example, would make a fine title by itself.
It is also impossible to strive to be the encyclopedia of that period in time. CD-ROM, in its current form, is just too limited a medium to provide that much information.
So, what it is? An interactive rockumentary, a time capsule, and a game. For us, it was a lot of fun to produce. Thank you for supporting our effort. Make love, not war. Give peace a chance. Turn on, tune in, and drop out. All you need is love. We all shine on.
