Core Competency: Creativity & Innovation

Creativity and Innovation: The skill to combine and synthesize existing ideas, images, or expertise in original ways. The capacity to explore obstacles and opportunities from a variety of perspectives to enhance the ability to think, analyze and innovate.


Context

Course Information: CRWR1010: The Craft Of Creative Writing

Creation Date: August 30th 2023

Description of Artifact:

The short story Beware The Owls’ Herald explores a mysterious legacy within New York City's Herald Square and its connection to the New York Herald newspaper. It highlights the peculiar fascination of the paper's publisher, James Gordon Bennett Jr., with owls, leading to the installation of owl statues on the original Herald building. Two of these statues remain in the square today, their glowing eyes sending out an enigmatic signal which researchers decipher as the French phrase l'Γ©diteur se trouve dans (β€˜the publisher lies within’). The message hints at Bennett Jr.'s unfulfilled plan to construct a 200-foot owl-shaped mausoleum in Washington Heights, where he intended to be buried. The creative piece blends historical detail with speculative elements, exploring themes of legacy, eccentricity, and hidden stories in urban spaces, and is visualized though a generative narrated video.

The piece can be read at : https://www.academicmatt.com/individual-assignments/beware-what-the-owls-herald
It
was also publicly published by Philadelphia-based horror poetics journal Cul-de-Sac of Blood: https://www.culdesacofblood.com/matt-shadbolt

Skills, Knowledge of Abilities Demonstrated

Specific Skills/Knowledge:

Blending Fact with Speculative Fiction: It demonstrates creative storytelling by merging historical facts with fictional speculative narrative elements, creating an engaging and thought-provoking piece which gets brought to life through artificial intelligence and narrated video.

Historical Research and Contextual Analysis: The artifact demonstrates a deep understanding of New York City’s history, specifically the checkered evolution of Herald Square and its architectural and cultural significance.

Symbolism and Interpretation: It showcases an ability to interpret and manipulate symbolic elements, such as the owl statues, and connect them to broader fictional themes of legacy, secrecy, and obsession.

Deciphering Hidden Messages: The artifact highlights skills in pattern recognition and code-breaking, as seen in the interpretation of the glowing owl eyes' irregular pulses, revealing a hidden French message which unlocks the monument.

Architectural and Cultural Awareness: The artifact reflects knowledge of architectural history and cultural practices of the time, including Bennett Jr.'s eccentric designs and Stanford White’s influence upon New York architecture.

Connection to the Core Competency

Relevance:

Exploring Unconventional Perspectives: The creative narrative explores both historical and fictional possibilities, such as Bennett Jr.'s real-life eccentric mausoleum plan, highlighting a capacity to think beyond conventional historical accounts to craft engaging and thought-provoking scenarios.

Enhancing Engagement Through Mystery and Puzzle Solving: The artifact demonstrates creativity by embedding a code-breaking element into the story, inviting readers to think analytically and engage with the content on a deeper level. It also incorporates the engagement of a professional voiceover artist to create a compelling video experience.

Reimagining Urban Spaces: The piece presents Herald Square as more than just a public space, transforming it into a creative canvas for hidden stories and untold mysteries, inspiring readers to view their own urban environments in innovative and imaginative ways.

Combining Historical Facts with Speculative Fiction: The artifact creatively blends documented historical events, architectural details, and folklore with imaginative storytelling, synthesizing existing ideas into an original narrative which seeks to spark curiosity.

Innovative Interpretation of Symbolic Elements: By reinterpreting the owl statues and their glowing eyes as a hidden message, the artifact showcases an ability to see familiar objects from a creative fresh perspective, uncovering new layers of meaning.

Challenges and Solutions

Challenge: Balancing Historical Accuracy with Creative Narrative
Solution: Thorough online and real-world field research was conducted to ensure historical facts were accurate, while creative liberties were carefully framed to complement rather than distort the factual basis of the story.

Challenge: Interpreting Symbolism in a Meaningful Way
Solution: Symbolic elements, such as the owl statues and glowing eyes, were given a deeper narrative purpose by linking them to Bennett Jr.'s real-world eccentric legacy, creating a coherent and compelling story.

Challenge: Making a Hidden Message Feel Authentic
Solution: The irregular pulses of the owl eyes were crafted into a plausible code which, when deciphered, reveals a meaningful phrase in French, adding an authenticity to the fictional mystery.

Challenge: Engaging Readers with a Complex Historical Topic
Solution: The story was framed as a mysterious puzzle to capture readers’ interest, using suspense and intrigue to make the historical content more engaging and accessible.

Challenge: Integrating Architectural and Cultural Details
Solution: Architectural and cultural references were woven into the narrative naturally, ensuring that they enriched the story rather than overwhelming it with dense historical detail.

Impact on Professional and Academic Growth

Professional Growth:

Creating this artifact has deepened my ability to synthesize historical research with creative storytelling, enhancing my capacity to communicate complex ideas in engaging ways. It also led to my first opportunity to be publicly published as a writer. The process challenged me to think critically, interpret symbolism, and innovate by blending fact and fiction, but also strengthened my problem-solving skills, particularly in making historical narratives more accessible and intriguing to diverse audiences. Through this experience, I’ve honed my creative writing, research, and analytical abilities, and continued to write fiction independently. Overall, this project has broadened my perspective on how creative approaches can enhance professional communication and storytelling in various fields.

It led me to build https://www.anthologymatt.com/ - a place to house all my creative and academic writing efforts into a single place from which to grow as a writer.

Academic Growth:

This artifact has significantly contributed to my academic growth by enhancing my research, critical thinking, and analytical writing skills. The process required a deep dive into historical sources, encouraging me to evaluate the credibility of information and synthesize it into a cohesive narrative. It also taught me how to work with symbolism and integrate interdisciplinary knowledge, combining history, architecture, and cultural studies into a story compelling enough to be believable as truth. Crafting the artifact pushed me to explore creative storytelling techniques within an academic framework, improving my ability to present complex ideas clearly and engagingly. Overall, it has strengthened my capacity to think innovatively and communicate creative writing ideas effectively in academic contexts.

Self-Evaluation

Rubric Score You Think You Earned For This Submission: 20

My responses to the artifact effectively reflect the core competency of creativity and innovation by demonstrating an ability to synthesize historical facts with creative interpretations in original ways, but also to see the work as a space of opportunity for growth after graduation. It also stretched me to bring the piece to life by engaging a professional voiceover artist and visualizing Bennett’s world with generative artificial intelligence, which I had to learn how to edit and combine. The content development is strong, using compelling narratives to deepen understanding while maintaining a clarity and fluency, but also reflects the beginning of a creative writing journey, rather than a destination reached. Importantly, the work here sets in motion a path towards publication beyond class. Overall, my responses present logical conclusions which align with the inquiry findings and illustrate a solid grasp of the subject matter through thoughtful content development.

Survey
This artifact helped me demonstrate growth within the competency of Creativity and Innovation by blending historical research with imaginative storytelling to create a compelling narrative that sparks curiosity and engagement. By reinterpreting urban spaces and symbolic elements like the owl statues, I showcased my ability to see familiar environments from fresh perspectives and craft original, thought-provoking narratives. The process challenged me to balance historical accuracy with creative liberties, while also incorporating innovative tools such as generative AI visuals and professional voiceovers to bring the story to life. This experience deepened my capacity to merge analytical rigor with creative expression, setting the foundation for ongoing growth as a writer and storyteller.


Artifact:

Herald Square, New York (1897)

Built on the convergence of Broadway, 34th street and 6th Avenue, today Herald Square is one of the busiest intersections in New York. It’s where holiday parades culminate, and where cinematic Christmas miracles have been said to happen. But as with all things in Manhattan, the ever-changing present is built upon a frequently torn-down past as the city constantly reinvents itself towards the future. The places and faces change, but often the names of an indifferent intersection remain. Once the site of the New York Herald newspaper, one of the most widely read broadsheets in the country, the original building was torn down in 1921, and the paper ceased publication in 1924 after an illustrious, if often scandalous 89-year run.

Like many New York newspapers, it had been a family business, founded by James Gordon Bennett Sr. and passed down to his son, James Gordon Bennett Jr. During the Civil War, Bennett Snr. had been a vocal advocate of southern secession, frequently used racist language, attacked Lincoln for attempting to hold the Union together, and supported local anti-war rallies. His tenure saw the expansion of traditional news reporting to include sports, murders and sex scandals, and in many ways birthed what would become today’s modern American media, fueled by a constant diet of opinion and partisanship.

James Gordon Bennett Sr. (1870)

If Bennett Snr. was a polarizing figure, his son was even more so. A playboy who enjoyed a lifestyle of yachts, mansions, private railroad cars and everything alcohol could offer in a good night out, including a fondness for driving his carriage through the streets at full speed while naked. Educated in France and obsessed with owls, he would often keep live birds in his office, marked the newspaper’s masthead with them, and decorated the architecture of the paper’s premises with their statues. But an expensive lifestyle also fueled commercial expansion, with The New York Herald moving into its beautiful new Stanford White-designed building in 1908. In 1906, White was shot and killed at the nearby Madison Square Theater by Harry Kendall Thaw, in front of a large audience during a musical theater performance, Thaw claimed White was having an affair with his chorus girl partner, Evelyn Nesbit.

But in New York, when you tear down a building, you always leave its ghosts. All that remains of The Herald is the name of the square, and a curious monument to its existence. At night, the monument cuts an ominous figure, and high atop the never-sleeping city, are the clock, and two remaining stone owls from White’s original building. If you look carefully, you can see that their eyes pulse with a piercing green glow. On the back of the monument is a permanently sealed door, with a masonic symbol and the French words La nuite porte conseil. Sometimes translated as β€˜let’s sleep on it’, or β€˜the night brings advice’, it’s a curious key to a long shut case.

James Gordon Bennett Sr. (1905)

The more observant will notice that the owls’ eyes don’t pulse in sync. Nor do they pulse evenly. Their source of power is itself a mystery, still pulsing through blackouts and hurricanes in recent years. Cryptographers have tried modern ciphers to make sense of the owls’ signals, but with little success. No-one knows how to open the mysterious back door.

That is, until we found something. We’d trained a camera on both owls, and using modern methods to interpret the data, created a database by which we could translate the pulses not just through the night, but how they changed with the seasons and the weather. Our results were astonishing. After months of data harvesting, a pattern emerged. A pattern in French. A pattern deciphered as l'Γ©diteur se trouve dans. The publisher lies within. The night truly had brought advice. It had unlocked what might be inside the monument itself. Bennett Jnr’s obsession with owls didn’t stop with his death. He had planned to build a 200-feet high owl-shaped mausoleum in Washington Heights, again designed by Stanford White, in which his coffin would hang, allowing visitors to walk around it as they ascended to the top to enjoy the stunning view of downtown. This project was unrealized with White’s untimely death.

White’s proposed owl mausoleum for James Gordon Bennett Jnr. (Unrealized, Washington Heights, 1903)

But how to get in? The masonic symbol on the back door, depicting the French inscription, an owl resting on a crescent moon, and five stars, offered the promise of formula, but without resolution. The nocturnal owls had indeed brought forth advice about the monument’s contents, while still obfuscating access. We searched again for numerical clues. Only two of the original twenty six owls remained on the monument. There were five stars on the door’s symbol. Three air vents towards the bottom of the door. A sunken handle with no lock still further offered little assistance. What might the code look like? Again we turned to our data to help us, but this time Bennett had beaten even the math. We turned to more esoteric ideas. We visited the back door again and again at night, avoiding the square’s security, using thermal imaging, and looking for any sign of access. Nothing. We wanted in, but it never occurred to us that something inside may want out.

We’d been focused on the handle, but in our desperation turned our thoughts to the stars. And that’s when it happened. If you look at a historical star chart for Bennett Jr.’s birthday, May 10th, 1841, a Monday, you’ll see five stars in the exact same alignment around Venus as depicted on the back door’s symbol. And the phase Venus is depicted in is known as the Athena alignment. It wasn’t a moon, it was a planet. And not just any planet. A planet with a phase named after a god associated with owls. But the frequency of such an occurrence was rare. When would it happen again? And what might happen if we were there? We consulted the star charts again, and found that the specific phase would return on November 5th, 1984 at 10pm. 11.5.84.10pm. Also a Monday. And a perfect anagram of 5.10.1841, Bennett’s birthday. 3 months away. We waited.

A photographic diagram of the Athena phase in Venus, found in James Gordon Bennett Jnr.’s wallet upon his death in 1918.

We had long suspected the five stars on the back door’s symbol meant something. That they might indeed, even be buttons in the absence of a handle. Five stars. That’s when we went back to the owls. November owls atop Manhattan rooftops are a specific breed. Snowy owls, named because of their white plumage and seasonality. Snowy has five letters. Transposed numerically based on alphabetical sequence that’s 19.14.15.23.25. Total them together and you get 96, the year in which Bennett took over as head of the paper after his father’s death. Total them individually as single digits and you get 1+9=0, 1+4=5, 1+5=6, 2+3=5 and 2+5=7. 05657. The zip code where Bennett supposedly died in Vermont. November 5th approached, and we had a variety of things we planned to try once 10pm came around. No stars in the Manhattan sky of course because of the air pollution, so we were relying solely upon our mathematical and astronomical calculations.

The evening of Monday November 5th 1984 was a noticeably quiet one for Midtown Manhattan. It was as if the city had prematurely emptied, and by 9pm all that was left was the periodic rumble of empty subway cars beneath our feet. Light snow began to fall. We waited. 9.59pm. Was anything going to happen? Were our calculations anywhere near the truth? Was our evidence just coincidence?

10pm. The subway rumbled again. But this time that wasn’t the subway. At least not this subway. It was something else. The symbols on the door, struck by the distant light of a Venusian crescent, illuminated a set of numerical keys on each of the stars. Five keys. We entered what we’d all agreed to be our best guess. 05657. Nothing. The clouds passed. Our years of investigation were over.

Through the biting wind, an owl called out in the distance. Then two owls. The door, shut for decades, purposefully, slowly creaked open. A tall figure emerged from the shadows, and strode out into the city’s snowy half-light. In the briefest of moments we saw him, we knew it was Bennett Jnr.

”What news of Stanford?”

Terrified, we fled. Our investigations and the owls both fell silent. Forever.


Sources:
Carr, N. (2010). Owls with Glowing Eyes in Herald Square. Scouting New York. Retrieved from https://www.scoutingny.com/demonically-possessed-owls-in-herald-square/.
Vadukul, A. (2013). With a Bird’s-Eye View of Herald Square, Seeing All but Noticed by Few. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/02/nyregion/with-a-birds-eye-view-of-herald-square-seeing-all-but-noticed-by-few.html.
Wikipedia. (2023). James Gordon Bennett Jr. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Gordon_Bennett_Jr.
Wikipedia
. (2023). James Gordon Bennett Sr. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Gordon_Bennett_Sr.



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