Ira Glass and Miranda July have lent their voices to the trailer for ‘Silent History’. It’s an app based publishing project created by former McSweeney’s publisher Eli Horowitz. It’s a new form of storytelling: a geo-located mobile serialized story. A little confusing, I know. The project has two parts. Basically the user downloads an app to their iPad or iPhone and receives a daily “testimonial”, or oral history that they can read anywhere.

Then there’s the second part of the project, which is the most interesting. There are ‘geo-tagged field reports’ that are related to the provided testimonials. They can only be read when the reader is standing in a specific spot around the country. Maps on the app show users the different locations with available stories. These “reports” will be about the place they are standing, a story that took place there, or a story about that place. These stories are created and uploaded by the users of the app and relate to a specific testimonial. There are 200 of them currently but they will grow as the project unfolds.

Every month 20 testimonials will comprise one book. There will be a month off between the books (seemingly to have time for users to upload their related stories or ‘reports’). The project will last one year.

The premise of the series is based on a group of children born with the ‘strange condition of silence’. They never develop the ability of language, but apparently, they have other gifts.

To be notified about the project updates, go here.