ORIGIN STORY
This project began with a box that never arrived.
My youngest brother took his life after a long struggle with mental illness. On his grave, we put the words "a pure soul," because that is the truest way to describe the extraordinary human being he was. He was the last of us, and in many ways the greatest of us.
When he died, I went somewhere close to catatonic. The shock, the grief, the disorientation made it hard to figure out how to put one step in front of the other. I just needed someone to tell me exactly what to do, moment by moment, until I could find my way back.
I remember wishing someone would send me a box in the mail. Something with layers of things like cozy socks, a special tea bag, a fossil of a 500,000-year-old trilobite, a mixtape I can't listen to because I don't have a tape deck anymore. As I unpacked each layer, I wanted someone to tell me a story that linked these seemingly random things into something meaningful. As I learned the story, I wanted someone to tell me things to do…in my body, in my neighborhood, with other people (maybe).
I wanted instructions.
Watch this specific movie, tonight, wearing the socks, drinking the tea. Here is a tape deck, now listen to the mixtape while walking through downtown Montrose, and let it guide you into Lost Books, Plants & Vinyl bookstore. Talk with the clerk about The Neverending Story (book, not movie), then ask for them to surprise you with a novel to buy and buy it. No matter what it is. Ask the clerk what their favorite coffee shop is and what they like from the menu. Go there. Order their drink. Sit. Read.
Tell me to get a rental bike to ride to the Arroyo Seco river and cry. Give me a question to answer while speaking into my voice memo. Give me a sketchbook. Doodle this.
I wanted each thing to have context. To wrap me up inside the story world as a bridge back to the real world. I needed someone to prompt me into meaning-making, because I had lost the thread.
That wish is becoming Story Ritual.
Imagine stepping out your front door and walking straight into a story. We transform the physical world—a quiet garden, a bustling city block, or a familiar neighborhood, into a living, breathing canvas.
The Journey This isn’t a story you simply watch on a screen; it is an adventure you touch, feel, and help create. Your journey might begin with a simple gift, mailed or handed to you on-site. Armed with something tangible and a spatial technology device(s), you are invited to unlock a narrative unfolding in real time and space. One that you engage with physically, but is enabled by the way finding and content portals embedded in the world around you.
The Feeling Weaving together poetic, literary-level storytelling with the science of human wellbeing, every step of the ritual is intentionally designed to make you feel deeply alive. The experience asks you to listen closer, look deeper, and move with purpose - sparking sensory awareness, meaningful reflection, and a profound connection to the present moment.
The Magic Story Ritual was born from a pressing modern question: How do we harness the incredible utility of the internet without losing our connection to physical spaces? In a culture of screen fatigue and disembodied tech, we offer a grounding alternative. By blending analog tools with the Spatial Web and IoT-enabled environments, we use technology not as a distraction to pull you away from the world, but as an invisible thread to anchor you more deeply within it.
Through a vibrant mix of spatial music, visual art, dance, writing, and participatory performance, Story Ritual turns technology into a vessel for human connection. Here, narrative isn't just something you consume, it is a lived encounter.