Current Project Locations

	A Study in Migration Through the Real, Desired & Recreated Geographies of Eight Employees, Champaign, IL >> A Study in Migration is a virtual tour in the form of a small exhibit at the iHotel Conference Center, that maps the experiences of eight employees.
	mMigration Research & Recreation Center, Champaign, IL >> The mMigration Research & Recreation Center is a proposed addition to the iHotel Conference Center. The mMigration Center will be a multi-use entertainment and educational facility serving the greater Champaign-Urbana area. Specifically, it will focus on narratives of migration and mobility in and through the region.
	Touring Olympia >> Touring Olympia is a long term tourism campaign produced with artist Sarah Ross, attempting to understand the ideological geography of the Olympic Movement. We will be producing guided and self-guided tours, proposals for counter monuments and other research materials.
	The Great Disassembly of 2008 Tour >> A tour of the near-future of a fictional United States in which the transportation infrastructure is disassembled and reconfigured into a pedestrian and mass transit utopia. A promotional poster, produced by the future National Historical Administration, highlights some of attractions and sites of the tour, including an abandoned big-box store parking lot. Produced by the Travel Office and artist Sarah Ross.
	Contaminating the Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve >> The Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve is a 46,000 acre National Park established in 1988. The Preserve "unites private landowners, corporations, and city, state, and federal government agencies in the effort to preserve a portion of Northeast Florida’s natural and human heritage." It is named for the linguistic cultures that inhabited the area at the time of European contact. The Preserve includes "wilderness" areas, recreated monuments, interpretive centers and historic sites. The Travel Office's residency is an attempt to expand the boundaries of the preserve to include coincidental histories in both near and distant relative pasts.
	Parking Public >> The Travel Office's Parking Public is an ongoing investigation into the political economy of parking in the United States. We have found, through extensive field work and research, that the vast plains of concrete we call parking lots do more than store our cars, they store the utopian ideals of a ruling class. Parking Public visitors can get information about parking in select cities, as well as guided tours and a video documentary.
	Bioremediation Plot Network: proposal for a temporary monument>> The Travel Office was invited by the Futurefarmers to create a proposal for a project dealing with the formation of a "Great Park"on the site of the former El Toro Marine Air Base in Irvine, California. Using the investigation of landscaping technology and ecology begun in the Invasive Irrigation Kits as a starting point, the proposal merges high tech methods of communication with low tech solutions to ecological problems, and attempts to visualize the dialectics of our use of technology to solve problems. The "monument" is purposefully temporary and designed to disrupt the specific experience of land use/development at the site as uncontested and ahistorical.
	Invasive Irrigation Kits [Southern California]>> In the populated desert of Southern California, water - and the plant life it supports - is an all precious resource. So are the numerous immigrant populations that support much of the economy and cultural life here. Open space, while seemingly abundant in the sprawling landscape, could also be recognized as a resource in danger. As part of a series of events called the October Surprise, The Travel Office has created portable irrigation kits that be distributed by community members in spaces that are in need of physical and/or cultural attention. Kits include seeds of Brassica juncea (mustard) - a plant known for its ability to remove toxins from soil. We located some remaining kits! If you would like one, please write us to ask.
	TOUR OF THE CHICAGO TECHNOLOGY PARK >> How is corporate biotechnology shaping the spaces we live in? The Travel Office has created a self-guided audio tour of the Chicago Technology Park, Chicago's attempt to compete in the "new economy" of bio- and nanotechnology. Download the tour and experience the ongoing saga of Chicago's experiments with social engineering. Materials available include the full audio tour (as MP3 files, a guided map of the CTP and complete transcripts. TAKE THE WEB TOUR , [Flash Player, audio, email app and printer connection needed]
	LOFOTEN, NORWAY [emergency tourist kits]>> TTO representative, Ryan Griffis attended the Transcultural Mapping (organized by the RIXC Center in Riga) workshop in Lofoten, Norway in June, 2004 and developed a proposal for Emergency Tourist Kits. (prototype in development) Kits will contain emergency ponchos printed with definitions of "Invasive Species" in Norwegian, hats with emergency nautical flags, postcards + more
	Postcard from Eutopia, Springfield, Missouri The first Travel Office was established at the Art & Design Gallery at Southwest Missouri State University as part of YOUgenics2.0. The Office provided a communication and information table for visitors tocontemplate the relationship between global mobility/transportation and the activities of the biotech industry. The goal was to get info flowing from gallery tourists to the representatives of biotech research and development, rather than from industry PR to consumers.