We have a more constructivist idea of how you might make art. But you can also make your own story through the process of triangulation - comparing fragments from a diary to an article in the newspaper and then connecting that to the Census. While, alone, those might just be inert information, combining them somehow electrifies all three. And it may be a story that you are the very first person to have seen. The Valley is trying to give you enough ordinates to get your bearings in this place we call the past.
Life is short.
People are curious about the past, but there's a finite amount of time they'll spend living in the past unless they have a passion for it, like I do. In Promise, there's a moment when a boy listens to a lynching on the first Edison talking machine. I still get chills up my spine. Part of The Valley's purpose is to enable that passion, that moment of excitement. Or making what looks like a simple assertion about the past complicated.