Territory as Interface
An interesting read and what seems to me as being a nice guide to what this sky bible business is all about. Longford sparks up a conversation about the MDCN (Mobile Digital Commons Network) and the collaborative network they’ve created, specifically going into detail about two projects:
1. The Urban Archeology: Sampling the Park
2. The Haunting
He goes into detail describing the projects and what they consist of. What I found most interesting about his discussions on the two projects was the amount of questions he asks. Never really answering any of them, but bringing them to light. The questions, in my opinion, are far more important than the answers. These are also similar questions that we ourselves have asked during our project process. Creating the abstract vs the literal?? Limitations to the technologies? Not incorporating enough interactivity? Creating too much? All these, and more, seem to run through most mobile experiments of this kind.
“Place is not given, it is made” is a quote from Malcolm McCullough that Longford mentions in his article. It’s interesting to think about changing a place, or setting, or landscape, that has already been established in our own minds through experience and understanding by augmenting a new reality (through for example these mobile experiences). We sometimes stay fixated on what a place already means, and become closed off to the possibilities a space has either in fantasy or in reality. In this regard, territories are truly the new design interfaces for augmented realities.
1. Longford mentions the splicing of audio sounds, both abstract and literal. How does this affect the space in which we are trying to engage with? Does it brings us more into a space or distance us from it?
2. Is there such thing as mobile overload with these projects? IE combining too many elements in a single project, thus causing a lack of engagement and affinity.