The Red Highlands are the spine of the central area of Rilao: hillsides dominated by dense residential Sustainable Terraced Elevated Module (STEM) buildings, built on top of one another to encourage high-density housing innovation. The central part of the district, the lowlands that connect the two opposing hillsides, also contain a section of old buildings in the High Coral style, which form some of the oldest housing stock in the island. These luxury buildings are at odds with the high-density STEM parts of the neighborhood: airy, sunny mansions that employ service workers from the hillsides and exacerbate the social splits in the space. In the South part of the district, a large chunk of agricultural land is managed as a community garden and granary, providing low-cost produce in exchange for farm labor from the Highlands. The people in the High Coral areas are usually not involved in this labor-barter system.
The area was a dumping ground for left over resources and unused parts from industry in years past. The dumped material created phosphorescent, and electronic reactive dyes and colorants. Zda illegally mines these chemicals to use in his body art work. He inadvertently discovers new valuable resource and the new government threatens his work.
Ted Braun, Shane Valdes
This educational toy was based on constructivist ideas of progressive education. Students used the cards to create story prompts. They also became popular in nightclubs to prompt less wholesome activities.
Tara McPherson (author of card)
Scott Fisher, Michael Sandler, Pan Leung, Stephanie Argy (creators of artifact)
“HELP PROTECT OUR CHILDREN!” reads the poster from the Child Protective Agency of Rilao. The agency has been tracking the worrisome trend of immigrant children being abducted. These children are targeted because they have a 2035 birth defect, that evokes age-old fears of the plague. Should a chronic bloody nose spell death for immigrant kids?
Robyn Baker, Ioana Badea, Tara Mcpherson, Erin Bradner.
A smuggler’s key to create virtual golden coral beads used as currency for smuggled items was discovered in a playhouse used as a prop in a theatrical presentation of “I Had It All”
Marni, Josh, Eb, Jerrica
Review of I HAD IT ALL
Yesterday’s opening of Pria Ibenos’ latest exercise in political polemics fails to excite on many levels – not the least of which are its depiction of unbelievable characters and any subtlety at all.
“I Had It All” is all too obviously meant as a parable. Its characters – two brothers who are from “that hill where we can’t see the land below – and we’re okay with that” (as brother Juneau actually says near the beginning of Act 1) live in the richest parts of the High Coral area of the Red Highlands. Of course they have no idea how the oppressed people in the STEM housing live.
The play’s anti-government propaganda is presented in such a baldly obvious way that Ibenos undercuts her own ideas. The actors playing the two brothers – Willard Pantane and Nara Blilly – struggle gamely but are weighed down by dialogue which comes less from their characters and more from the play’s plot needs.
The one redeeming asset is Tiara Wilao’s set design. Though she clearly has no sense of what a real High Coral house looks like, she gives it a lush color palette which is in good contrast to the much more believable STEM set.
The Chef learned that if he boils the seeds of the Muku Tree he has developed an oil far more efficient than the current oil used for production. He is teaching select kids from district 3 how this works. (img 3).
Bella, Peter, Shane, Ted, Hanno
The raw seeds are pinkish in color (img 1) and the boiled seeds turn purple (img 2). The resulting oil is called the “Purple Dragon” (main image).
Hidden below the fang mansion in a secret storehouse we saw boxes containing small vials of a psychotropic liquid distilled from a muka-la tree. Over 100,000 vials were found along with robes and Lao religious materials, this was the basis for a psychedelic ritual.
Shane valdes
