this week's topic is Beyond the Computer Screen

Mobile Bristol - Constance Fleuriot

Mobile Bristol is a research project creating an experimental test-bed for technology and user value research in pervasive mobile media. The vision of the test-bed is to provide a digital canvas over the city onto which rich, situated, digital experiences can be painted and explored. As you walk through the city a diverse range of digital media experiences such as soundscapes, games, interactive media and art are available to augment the ambiance of the physical place.

Our overall aim is to investigate how mobile devices and wireless technology can be used to enhance the ways in which people experience and interact with their physical environment and with each other in urban and public spaces.

For example, we are interested in:

How might the digital world be linked to the physical and what are the associated interaction models for users?

How might people perceive and conceptualize this digital layer

How do we deal with a world with

- lots of different digital media in one physical place

- lots of different places with digital media

- concerns of privacy, access and security requirements

These sorts of questions generate specific application projects where we can test and evaluate different ideas. We are a mixed research team with diverse backgrounds in psychology, computer science, engineering, fine art, industrial design, information systems and social science.

We have already run a number of projects, both indoor and outdoor, where we are simultaneously exploring new forms of interaction, new forms of situated experiences and the needs of lifestyle integration, creating authoring tools, novel devices, and software architecture, creating a wired and wireless network that will allow pervasive wireless access across the city.

We also work with other people outside our core team on a project-by project basis, as well as enabling other groups to run their own project tests see partners on website.

Many of the questions we are asking ourselves within Mobile Bristol have echoes within the arts. For example, they are about people's engagement with interactive experiences, how they negotiate the boundaries of virtual spaces, and the importance or not of the context eg where a piece of digital media is physically located.

Mobile Bristol-Arnolfini Live is one of our experimental projects where we worked with people from outside our own field in order to get a fresh perspective on the questions we are asking. In collaboration with the Arnolfini, Mobile Bristol funded two bursaries and commissioned two artists, Zoe Irvine and Dan Belasco Rogers, to create interactive work to explore some of the potential of Mobile Bristol software, appliances and infrastructure. These research & development commissions ran during winter 2003-4, and have allowed the artists to begin to investigate our emerging and experimental technology and its relevance to their own practice, as well as to feedback into the design process of pervasive technology.

With regard to the work itself, we were keen to ensure the widest possible access to the works in progress and were specifically interested in works that were not ephemeral and/or time limited. We wanted the artists work to be presentable without the need for the artist/s to be present, and potentially to be available at a time of the audience/users choosing.

The artists brief was to create a piece of work that considered the following:

What strategies could be employed to motivate people to interact with the project. Why would they want to? What would they get?

If the content of the proposal is generated from participants, how did the artists propose to edit/direct the material to ensure quality of work?

What could an audience expect from their experience of the work? What is to be presented and how?

First thoughts from the artists were:

Zoe was interested in creating a filmic narrative that builds up an atmosphere for the 'user' to listen to, but then is invited to interact with in some way, and was looking at ?points of reciprocal involvement?. She also intended building a website as a means of remote access to the piece of work. Zoe's intentions threw up various questions about recording and capture, mediating user input, the difference between web based and headphone experience. As the outcome for her project she planned to have a small working model and sketches of content.

Dan was (and is) interested in location, personal event, memory. He uses gps whenever he is in control of his means of transport ie on foot, cycling or driving, and was building up a record of his interaction with cities, mainly Berlin. He was interested in gathering stories and locating them in the (changing) environment, and wanted to look at what are the appropriate stories to put out there, how many, how to layer them. Also, how to get the best stories out of people, what 'triggers' do you put out there to get them talking. His previous use of gps meant he had no illusions about its accuracy, and was interested in both technical and non-technical solutions to creating a finer grid.

Technical issues

The kit currently used for accessing (and testing) the majority of our projects consists of handheld PC (ipaq ? aka the client), head phones, location sensing hardware and software(e.g. global positioning system, ultrasound), client software, authoring software.

For a more detailed description of the technology used see appliance architecture section on website www.mobilebristol.com

The artists were given a toolkit of software and hardware that allow the authoring of mediascapes ie they could attach a digital audio or image file to co-ordinates in the physical space. The audience or user of the work will hear the audio file or see the image on screen when they enter the designer-defined area.

Dan's Mediascape

There were five days of face-to-face technical support where Zoe and Dan were taught how to use the software, but also had the chance to engage in discussion as to the technical constraints and the feasibility of their first plans for their work. They were also able to contact the technical support though use of email, and a forum was set up to share questions and ideas with the software authors and wider community.

Discussions between the artists and the Mobile Bristol team did affect what was produced. For example, initially, Zoe and Dan were both keen to be able to record user input on the client device, so that people's recordings were immediately available, and failing that to have. an 'operator' manually uploads recordings when the device is return to the 'rental location'. Incorporating a microphone to enable audience/user response to the work in situ was not available at the time that Zoe and Dan were developing their work, and so when the technical constraints were set at the start of the project they had to adapt their initial ideas to not include voice response. The software for capturing voice input was ready on the last day of the project, an example of the frustrations of working with developing technology.

Zoe's Mediascape

There was also discussion on questions of:

navigation,

switching between layers/ applications

interface issues for navigation

practicalities eg changing headphones/kit between different pieces of work?

context,

fidelity to location

using other technologies eg barcode scanners

use of verbal instruction in absence of fine grain location sensing

difference between in situ experience and web based

possible comparative study on the different experience for the audience

how to structure the levels of audience input and participation

the difference between experiencing a completely prepared work and an open mic piece

how people respond to what is there

how to set context to encourage contribution

temporal issues of contributions

Listen to Dan and Zoe talking about the importance of the in situ experience

Dan talking to Tom Melamed from Mobile Bristol

Zoe talking to Tom Melamed from Mobile Bristol

The resulting works-in-progress from this R&D phase are both located in Queen Square, an area near Bristol's harbourside and Arnolfini, and a place where we plan to test multiple layers of applications.

Description of the two projects:

Both Zoe and Dan used the kit consisting of ipaq+gps unit to enable the 'viewer' to access located audio as they moved around the outdoor space. With Zoe's piece the screen was hidden, in Dan's the screen displayed images to draw the users attention to a particular location.

Daniel Belasco Rogers: A description of this place as if you were someone else

As you walk down a street, do you wonder if it can remember everything that happened on it? Can bricks and mortar really record sound vibrations from the past and if so would you be able to hear yourself? A description of this place as if you were someone else is an exploration into siting personal histories in geographical locations such as Queen Square, to form the tapestry of experience, and how the viewer can use the technology to peel back the city's layers, revealing those personal stories of first kisses and car crashes.

Zoe Irvine: Moulinex

This piece takes as its points of departure the filmic sensation of using a walkman and Queen Square's recent history as a venue for open air cinema screenings. The viewer of the work navigates the physical landscape in which there are lingering fragments of film soundtracks which have both been shown there; the Matrix and Moulin Rouge. As the viewer/listener first walks around the soundscape it takes the form of an auditory archaeological dig but as the viewer moves further the sounds begin to merge and transform taking on ideas of DJ culture and plunderphonics.

These are by no means finished pieces of work for the artists, who modified their initial plans due to technical constraints of the software and the vagaries of working with gps. Whether the work was 'finished' or not, the process of producing it stimulated discussion and development of the Mobile Bristol set of tools for authoring mediascapes, and was enjoyable for all who were involved.

Both works were shown to an invited audience in February 2004, followed by an hour of discussion and response to the work, where the audience were asked to consider some of the questions that had been discussed during the R&D process, such as the impact of context, location, immersiveness, authenticity, control (author/user), distance, temporality, repeated experience, quantifying experience, the impact of the 'unreliability' of technology, how do you rationalise unreliability, what effect the physical technology had on the experience.

Zoe trying out the work with an audience

Click on the thumbnails below to view more images of the work being tested on an audience.

Both artists intend to continue to use the Mobile Bristol software to develop their work in a variety of locations, and it is still possible to view the work by prior appointment email constance@mobilebristol.com

Thanks and acknowledgements to:

Mobile Bristol team, especially Ben, Tom, Richard, Paul, Greg, John, Ki, Stuart, Hans.

Jon Dovey for facilitating the audience discussion

Tanuja Amarasuriya and Helen Cole (Arnolfini)