Story-sharing and Navigational Interfaces
  As a continuation of my research into facilitating and working with audience-generated interpretive materials, I have been formulating a new body of work based around questions of historic and geographic interpretation, expanding from the body-focussed interactions I’ve been working over the past six years, to situation-focused interactions and reflections. At this stage I am working on two separate but related interaction concepts: ‘Interactive Story Dice’ and the ‘World Telescope’. Both interaction concepts are intentionally open in scope – but have been developed with a view to deployment in community cultural development projects, arts in health and historic interpretation work. The aim is to draw on local expertise (i.e. participants as having some special knowledge), and simultaneously engage participants in a process of listening to and reflecting on the experiences of other participants. World Telescope…The ‘World Telescope’ proposal (really just a working title!) is proposal for a mobile outdoor art project that combines pre-existing databases of world place names and coordinates with a hand-operated telescope-like interface, computer graphics and a spoken word story-sharing system. Audiences locate and describe places of personal significance (ancestral homelands, birthplaces, locations of loved-ones etc.) using a built in computerised voice recording system, and then LISTEN to other visitors stories (edited and moderated each night, by the artist) as they move around the Earth using the tilt and rotate interface. The work could take the form of a portable 1.5 meter-long device, mounted on tripod and powered by a solar-powered battery system. Audiences would rotate the device to point in the ACTUAL direction of a place on Earth they want to talk about or listen to (relative to the location of the telescope) – and then tilt it up or down to move closer or further away from their present location. One idea I am considering presently – is to visualise place, country and region names on earth as vast collection of bilingually-labelled glowing points of light – distributed around an invisible sphere – not a representation of the earth per say – but a visualisation of human presence and relations across the earth.This idea is very inspired by the numerous start chart applications now available for the iPhone and Google Android. Sensors inside the sculpture translate tilt and rotation data into global coordinates, from which bilingual place names, and participant voice recordings are mapped to. A Large LED text displays on the exterior of the device could reveal locations being viewed by the operator – transforming the device into DYNAMIC MILESTONE, providing casual onlookers with some clues as to the devices functionality i.e. “WIRADJURI COUNTRY/FORBES, NSW 386 km W”, or “SEOUL 8324 km NW” etc. Another option is to visualise the earth beneath the interaction as hollow – so that viewers point the telescope downwards, to look through to locations literally on the other side of the world. Along the way I’ve been researching telescopes as augmented reality displays. Here are a few links that I’ve found particularly inspiring: Jeffrey Shaw Melbourne Museum Animal Viewer How we visualise the Earth is a very interesting problem, especially how we represent this information in a 2 dimensional image. Buckminster Fuller’s Dymaxion Map is a very interesting approach to this problem – one that approaches the process of flattening out a sphere in a very dynamic way – making it very clear to the user the multiple aproaches one can take to this task. These elegant, folding polyhedral forms, suggest interesting possibilities for sculptures, along the lines of Brazillian artist Lygia Clarke’s folding ‘Bichos’ sculptures. Interactive Story Dice… play and replayThe ‘Interactive Story Dice’ concept takes its inspiration from Rory O’Connor and Anita Murphy’s prize-winning Story Cubes improvisation game, (now also available as great looking iPhone application!) but focuses on the use of tilt sensors to record and then playback participant responses. Each face of the three die would be used to display a range of images designed to embody key moments in history or issues of significance for a given exhibition or community engagement process. Participants would then be invited to assemble the dice onto a sequence of images that has particular meaning for them. When they are ready, and in the presence of an exhibition facilitator, they can then contribute a spoken interpretation of this arrangement of images, relating it to their own experiences, beliefs and interests, and their understanding of other perspectives connected to the issues they have raised. Tilt sensors (and compass perhaps) readings are used to tag the orientation of each die. These stories are recorded along with dice tilt data, and played back on a separate but visually identical set of cubes, when that specific configuration of images (dice tilt data) is re-assembled. The experience of exploring seemingly random image combinations is transformed into a story-sharing experience.
In all these examples (including the Heart Library Project) I’m working with interaction as a framework for generating and reflecting on participant experiences–in ways that the participants themselves can access and reflect on. I’ll be working on addressing hardware and software requirements for both of these interfaces during my residency at Fraser Studios over the coming three months, with assistance from Jos Mulder and Frank Maguire. Most of this will focus on assembling and testing tilt and rotation sensing functions with Arduino and Zigbee wireless communication. Google Earth phone application… |
