16.6.07

Murmurs of a Project Idea

My interest for my final years work is turning more and more towards the idea of UbiComp. Though I am interested in Product based Media design, which lends itself more to wearables than to my ideas for a project, I feel that the ultimate expression of the network as a second 'layer' is by adding some kind of 'value' to geographic, real world locations.

Which leads me on to a link that Morna sent us, for Murmur Edinburgh, a tool which allows people to listen to stories linked to locations in the Leith area of Edinburgh. The system works by using stickers with unique phone numbers put up in the places in question, with a unique phone number which if phoned plays back the message. The stories are snapshots of peoples experiences and feeling about an area, which is nice as it builds up a kind of collective anthropology of the area and its people.

A more developed version of this can be seen with the Yellow Arrow project, a worldwide arts MAAP (more shite acronyms, I'm not even going to justify this one with a decoding) which promotes user involvement by allowing people to tag their own areas using stickers with unique text codes. As before, you find the sticker, text the code to the number, and get back a text message worth of information about that area. I think I prefer this, as it is more user participatory.

Although for some strange reason both of them ring hollow with me. I don't know if its simply a case of 'shit, I wish I'd thought of that, or perhaps it's just a feeling that the area of 'geotagging' places is saturated with ideas that are far too similar (the two mentioned above, Urban Tapestries, even Google), or maybe even that allowing people to do this will result in information overload, where the genuine tidbits of artistic, poetic nuances are overrun by peoples stickers saying 'omg, this is whr I had mi furst kiss lolz!!!1'

I'd like to find a way of distinguishing my project from these, to think of a new spin on it. A while ago Andrew Cook asked me if I'd be interested in doing a project that linked in with his interest in creating music.

From his myspace: I'm only really doing improv these days, and I'm an interaction designer really (as if you couldn't tell that from the dubious quality of my music), so new ways of interacting with sound-producing systems during improv is what really floats my boat."

This catches my interest. How can you create music based on location based media. Like, could you decode a picture to make it play a sound, and what would that sound be like? How could you link these sounds together to create a performance that would describe a particular time or place? How could these performances be linked by people, how to create a narrative that goes with the created sounds? How could you translate this into a live performance, and what aspects could you add? Is this art or design, or both?

These are some questions I'm mulling over at the moment. I'm considering e-mailing this stuff round people to get some early ideas on what people think of this, and any links etc. that might help.

If you are reading, thanks for reading.

PS. Still looking for a job.