Quite obviously no physics-defying “Escherian Stairwell” exists in the real world. The video was a bit of trickery created through the use of deceptive camera angles, careful editing, and digital effects, produced in conjunction with a (failed) campaign (“The Stairwell Project: Building a Modern Myth”) intended to help fund the creation of videos, articles, web pages, and other material establishing a backstory for the mythical stairway in time for Imagine RIT, the school’s annual Innovation & Creativity Festival:The most powerful aspects of myths are their ability to incite wonder and excitement. We’re creating a myth that does these things while also challenging audiences to think.The myth is that located in Rochester, NY, is the Escherian Stairwell, an architectural marvel that seems to violate the laws of physics and basic logic by looping back into itself. In order to lend credence to this myth, we’re creating an episode for a family-friendly science show that demonstrates the staircase in action, various clips from a 1997 documentary with prominent thinkers grappling with the existence of this apparent contradiction and pontificating on its implications, and a whole slew of supplemental online materials for today’s internet savvy audience to stumble across while trying to see if this thing is real (websites, scholarly articles, fan-pages, blogs, etc.). Help us build the myth!We are passionate about immersing audiences with a sense of wonder and surrounding them with a wealth of detail executed with such rigorous realism that they can choose to step into it, get lost in it, and believe in it. Films like Close Encounters and 2001 inspired us with awe, and even a hint of fear, when we first saw them. How do we capture that feeling again?