TAL's Book and DVD Mix Radio and Art (7: Unedited)

Usually, the term “mixed-media” brings to mind a mediocre artist who hot-glues stuff to his painting. “Mixed-mass media” doesn’t make our artist obese, but instead implies a fusion between the published art forms of print, video, and audio.

This American Life is a radio program produced by Ira Glass at WBEZ Chicago, and distributed by Public Radio International. TAL is not a typical radio show, as their website claims, “We're not a news show or a talk show or a call-in show... Instead, we do these stories that are like movies for radio. There are people in dramatic situations where things happen to them.” So, essentially, they talk about the happenings of ordinary Americans, most often subject to unordinary circumstances.

In 2004, Ira Glass and comic artist and writer Chris Ware collaborated to produce a slideshow called Lost Buildings. Glass composed the interviews and stories, and Ware drew relevant artwork for the corresponding slideshow.

Lost Buildings is the story of Tim Samuelson’s fascination, as a young man in the 1960s and 70s, with Chicago’s buildings that were designed by famed architect Louis Sullivan. As modern architecture gained popularity in the public and private eyes of America, the multiple Sullivan buildings that characterized Chicago began to disappear.

In its original presentation, Lost Buildings was recorded live in front of a theatrical audience, and the images were projected onto a large screen. For the public that was not in attendance, TAL sells a DVD of the audio and slideshow, coupled with an extensive book of the notes and photographs from Samuelson.

The show is first introduced with an explanation of its original presentation and audience, and asks forgiveness in an attempt to put its current viewer in the seat of one of the slideshow’s original patrons. What follows is an incredible amalgamation of radio and printed art, presented on DVD for home viewing. Three mediums are utilized to tell the story about a young man’s obsessions with buildings.

Lost Building’s menu is typical of Ware’s printed work, which in this case, mimics that of its subject. A complex array of bending lines weave across the screen and are superimposed with the emergence of an ornate staircase decoration, and are then overlaid by a simple map of Sullivan buildings in Chicago. These stylistic themes become a point of reference in the show, in both its subject and style.

The slideshow starts with a black screen and the familiar radio voice of Ira Glass, as he begins an anecdote about Samuelson’s boyhood obsession. Samuelson frequently chimes in with answers to Glass’s questions, and the audio track becomes both documentary and interview, accompanied by an appropriate mixture of contemporary and classical music. As the show continues, the viewer finds himself studying Ware’s renditions of the famed buildings with growing sympathy towards Samuelson and their destruction, and the futility of its prevention.

The show becomes a study of two major themes: Samuelson and his mentor, Richard Nickel, find their friendship built by the destruction of Sullivan’s buildings. The second theme looks through a larger scope to observe America’s starvation for capitalistic newness and how it destroys beautiful work, despite men’s passions and efforts to stop it. Houston’s supporters of the River Oaks Theater can easily relate to the latter.

The special features of the disc include unused audio of Samuelson and Glass, which are significant in the feature's short run time. There is also a “frame enlargement” option to make easier the appreciation of Ware’s drawings. Also, when put into a computer and opened as a volume drive, the disc contains a high-resolution Quicktime version of the slideshow in its entirety.

The hardcover book could stand on its own with its comprehensive content and information. Following two pages of explanation and introduction from Chris Ware, there are about 90 pages of notes, reproduced letters, detailed and candid photographs, and interpretations by Samuelson and Nickel that submerge the reader into a deeper study of Sullivan’s master work. Most of the book concentrates on the famous Garrick Theater, relived in the detailed photographs and floor plans of the building. The book becomes a dissection of his architecture and complicated art form, found in the pages, on the DVD’s surface, and as the endpapers and covers of the book.

The book and DVD set is available from This American Life at thislife.org for $22, shipping included. For the wary, the website has a short Quicktime preview of the slideshow. Proceeds benefit the nonprofit radio show, which can be heard on the website and in Houston on 88.7 KUHF on Sundays at 11am, and 90.1 KPFT on Mondays at 2 pm.