PDA, GPS Mutate City Streets into Archaeology
(Page 1 of 4 )
In an interesting fusion of digital technology and art, visitors to San Franciso's Digital Storytelling convention late last year had the chance to learn about the history of a neighborhood while wandering the area with a GPS-enabled HP iPaq Pocket PC. How did this experiment work, and what are the potential uses for the technology in the future? Keep reading to find out.
Imagine that, some time a few years from now, you are walking down a drab-looking city street, headphones plugged into your PDA. You wander past a flea market, and hear a personable voice, maybe with soft music or a hint of business bustle in the background. “This flea market is held every Saturday. And you never know what you might find. Why, I wandered into one of the stalls a few months ago and came out with an antique beer stein – paid only a dollar fifty for it, too.”
No, you aren’t going crazy. You have just experienced what Hewlett-Packard calls a “mediascape.” Its research lab in Bristol, England, spent three years developing a technological framework for this phenomena, which was artistically unveiled for the first time in the United States on October 7 last year. On that day, Project Artaud, a co-op residence and work space for artists in San Francisco, staged “Scape the Hood.” It was a collaboration between HP, broadcaster KQED and Mission District community artists. The experiment took place as part of the tenth annual Digital Storytelling Festival.
At least part of the technology that makes it happen would be fairly familiar to most of the readers of this article: a GPS-enabled HP iPaq Pocket PC, combined with a location-based software platform developed by HP Labs. The iPaq knows exactly where its user is standing thanks to the GPS, and sends that information to the software. The software automatically plays back the appropriate vignette, depending on the user’s location; no other interaction is required from the user.
The fact that the mediascapes play automatically is one thing that differentiates the “Scape the Hood” experiment from what you might have experienced if you have taken an audio tour of a museum exhibit. Since the device used for such a tour has no idea where you are standing, you are guided to follow a particular route based on numbers attached to particular locations; you go in a specific order, and hit the play button each time you reach a new location as indicated.
These mediascapes, or little added pieces of digital texture to the landscape, can be anything: random music, nature sounds, brief anecdotes provided by residents, and more. For obvious reasons, the ones used by the “Scape the Hood” experiment were kept short, usually anywhere from 30 seconds to three minutes.
Next: Narrative Archaeology >>
More Opinions Articles
More By Terri Wells
