local histories and community domains - 2006/05/10 17:51There is a strong practice of local histories that you seem to be building on. Can you share with us the ways you thought about the challenges of representing histories; how and if the project constructed new identities and identifications by the subjects who you engaged; who else is party to this process--what happens to audiences; were you concerned about a kind of motion based monumentality; what were the aesthetics of histories that you constructed; how did the physical location laminate with the mobile spaces?
Thanks!
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Mads Haahr
Visitor
Re:local histories and community domains - 2006/05/12 07:08Thanks for the questions! I'm going to leave the ones about the story fragments to Valentina, since she not only collected the stories from the locals, but also created the video clips and did the user studies and focus groups. However, I'll be happy to reply to your last question about the use of space vs location in the application.
In general, there has been quite a lot of attention to location-aware applications and locative media. This is great, and I think there's a lot that can be done with those types of applications. However, I think it's important to distinguish between location and space. Many location-based applications are tourist guide type applications, which aim to tell you specific details of different locations, but are not really concerned with the space that you're in.
The Media Portrait of the Liberties (MPL) is different from much of this work in that the space is more important than the location. While some of the story fragments of MPL certainly do concern particular locations (e.g., the Guinness Brewery), its real focus is on the use of space to improve the audience's immersion into the story. Of course location is important, too, but to put it a bit bluntly, it's mainly because knowledge about someone's location allows us to determine the space that they're in. We consider an interesting space (such as the Dublin Liberties) an excellent resource, which can be used to help overcome the constant switch between being actor and audience that you often experience in interactive stories.
I'm sure Valentina and Ian will want to add their own views to this!
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valentina nisi
Visitor
Re:local histories and community domains - 2006/05/17 04:39Thanks a lot for the questions and sorry again for the delay in participating in the debate. I have extracted and adapted parts of the paper written for ISEA to answer the questions about the stories, complementing Mads intervention on physical location and mobile spaces. Best valentina
- Q: There is a strong practice of local histories that you seem to be building on. Can you share with us the ways you thought about the challenges of representing histories;
Why distribute a community’s stories around their neighbourhood streets? The answers to this question are numerous, and cover broad intellectual, emotional and sociological ground. The fact that stories are fundamentally valuable is beyond reproach. It is undeniable that stories form a universal mechanism for sharing information about ourselves and others, for imparting lessons, and for more frivolous purposes: to inspire and entertain. More seriously, stories and narratives also serve an important social function as a stimulus to discussion and debate. Furthermore, stories connect us to distant places and times, and form a significant portion of not only present day culture, but also the legacy that we will pass on to future generations. The important role that stories play in our lives has meant that new technologies are rapidly adopted, or even developed specifically for, the purpose of storytelling. Cinema is probably the most prominent example of this, but computer games, some of which now contain relatively sophisticated narratives, are an emerging contender for this title. In the Western world, it is easily arguable that the popularity of screen-based media has surpassed that of live performance (in the form of theatre or oral storytelling). As a result, the vast majority of stories are now told away from the grungy physicality of the real world, and in familiar, sterile, two-dimensional landscapes composed of darkened rooms and glowing screens.
We believe, however, that that we are on the cusp of a technological shift that has the potential to alter our storytelling practices once again. Advances in the areas of mobile and ubiquitous computing, location-tracking systems and wireless networking enable us to push stories beyond the screen and back into real space. By co-locating places and stories, we can create a rich synergetic experience of place, a complimentary merging of narrative and environment. By allowing our audience to see, smell, feel and hear a place, while simultaneously experiencing its stories and history we can paint a rich and nuanced picture of it. Samuel Smiles defines place as something “we rather feel than understand: an indistinct region of awareness”, and it is this abstract concept that we are interested in conveying. In Media Portrait of the Liberties (MPL) project, we combine mobile wireless technology and the framework of locative media to construct a novel system that allows its audience to vividly experience a community’s public spaces through the stories, anecdotes and memories of its local residents. We believe this represents a provocative pairing of new technology and the digital arts.
The Media Portrait of the Liberties (MPL) is a modular collection of anecdotal stories drawn from a disadvantaged Dublin inner city neighborhood: the Liberties. Characters and themes reported by our sources in the community provide a natural hyperlinked structure for these non-linear narrative segments. The narratives are displayed as short video clips on a location aware handheld computer.
The story expressed in each video clip was taken from historical, literary or word-of mouth accounts of life in this area in the past. Each story also referenced specific streets, buildings or courtyards in the Liberties and is only available for viewing when a user is in or close to these objects. For instance, a story describing the historical grandeur of a building could only be viewed when a user is standing next its present day ruins. Stories about local characters or family dramas could be watched only in the streets where the events described actually took place. Our investigations indicate that presenting this rich narrative content set in a particular place to user situated and physically immersed in that same place provides a vivid and evocative experience that encapsulates something of the “sense of place” described by Smiles.
Given its substantial scope, the development of MPL encompassed a number of diverse activities. A substantial effort was involved in the collection, scripting, shooting and editing of the video clips that form its content. Beyond these standard production tasks, we also had to meaningfully situate each piece of media in the physical environment. Due to the fact that the media would be experienced in a distributed and fragmented fashion, we developed plots around multiple themes and characters that richly intersected with one another. To represent these thematic links we created a simple information architecture that allowed users of the system to follow multiple paths through the library of clips, experiencing them in an order dictated not only by their physical path through the city, but also by the topics that caught their interest. On the technical side, we constructed location aware display software for this content, and more challengingly, attempted to design an interface to seamlessly access its complexity. Finally, we performed an extensive subjective user study of the system to gauge the reactions it provoked in its audience.
- Q: What were the aesthetics of histories that you constructed;
The MPL content is a collection of stories based on the life and history of a community of people living in the same neighborhood. Factually based stories appeal to us because they are directly connected with what we perceive to be real events and history. Such stories can provide us with inspiration for our own lives, prompting us to recollect anecdotes and trigger personal memories. Like a spider web, real stories lead into each other; connect characters and themes providing a natural hyperlinked structure that can be used as the basis for an interactive modular narrative. While researching the content for the MPL, we made contact with members of the Liberties community, who contributed content to the project with enthusiasm: For example, local community member Charlie Hammond told us stories about the Poddle, a river that runs underground through the Liberties and was the second water supply for the city after the main river Liffey. Local writer Mairin Johnston took us on a tour of the area and told us stories about her family moving into the neighborhood from Galway during the famine era. We interpreted the enthusiasm and participation of local people as a genuine sign of the desire of the community itself to share their sense of history through the project. Charlie commented, in one of our conversations: "Social history is rich in this area. I believe it is important for this community to understand their own neighborhood”. To start the content production an initial set of twenty short stories were selected from Johnston's book “Around the Banks of Pimlico” , ranging from Johnston’s family stories to socio-historical anecdotes about the area.
The MPL stories were scripted and produced through a variety of methods according to their different characteristics. The stories ranged from ghost stories over descriptions of architectural changes in the area to individual portraits of local characters. In creating the audiovisual media segments we used a mix of video, animation and photographic media and a narrating voice that related the anecdotes in the first. Film sets were staged around the Liberties area. Stories were re-enacted using costumes and in settings inspired by the descriptions in Johnston’s book. For example, the enactment of a traditional music session that took place every Sunday in "Mickey Murphy’s Yard" during the 1940s brought together researchers and film crew with local community members and actors. This episode, created a vibrating atmosphere between past and present, real time storytelling and reinterpretation of the local past. Irish traditional musicians played in the courtyard of the Pimlico cottages for an afternoon. Local people came along and engaged in the action, participating as local characters in the filming. The session itself was also an opportunity to informally chat to locals about the project and verify their enthusiasm for providing new content to the story collection, reviving memories, anecdotes and a sense of pride of being from the Liberties area. A different kind of story, referencing buildings that do not exist anymore or particular events too complex to re-enact, were produced using some of the material collected during the research such as old photographs and watercolours sketches produced during the storyboarding process. A different kind of stories, referencing ghosts and supernatural events were produced through blue screening and digital effects. The varied methodology added expressivity and freshness to the media pieces, and highlighted some ideas for how to develop a framework under which to guide the community members in the feedback collection phase, when they will be able to provide and produce their own stories to add to the collection.
- Q: how and if the project constructed new identities and identifications by the subjects who you engaged; who else is party to this process--what happens to audiences;
The process of storytelling always involves a story, a narrator, a medium and an audience. To capture the audience response we designed a user study involving media experts, community members and non-residents in trying the project and sharing their comments with us. The media experts were people with experience in digital media technologies from artistic, technical and/or educational angles. Within the community sample were people who were born and lived in the area as well as people who moved to the liberties at a later stage of their lives and considered themselves members of the Liberties community. For the non-residents category we sampled people from outside the Liberties neighborhood, ranging from Dubliners, to native Irish and foreigners, some of which were tourist, others foreign nationals living in Dublin. The methodology for evaluation involved observation by shadowing the participants in their tour of the area, recording their comments and engaging in a semi-structured interview at the end of the experience. We studied seven cases for each audience category. Their comments were recorded through a wearable audio recorder as they were touring the Liberties neighborhood with the iPAQ in search of stories. Three users from each group experienced the Liberties project on their own while the other four toured in pairs resulting in a total of four tours per category. This method was used to investigate what kind of exchanges among audience members were prompted on location. As the people were walking around the streets experiencing the stories, we observed them at a distance trying not to influence their choices, recording their trail through the Liberties and taking notes about their behaviour. At the end of the tour, the audience members were assembled for a focused conversation about their experience with the MPL.
Analysis of the results showed a high level of interest in and engagement with the project by all participants. Audience members from different user groups demonstrated different foci.
Community Reaction
Community members were selected from the “Living Heritage” class organized by a local community centre. Following them around the Liberties was a very different experience from observing audience members non residents in the neighbourhood. The Liberties is a disadvantaged inner city area, and audience members who are not native to the area were not able to relax as much even if still enjoyed the overall experience. People on the streets had a very friendly attitude when they recognized audience members as part of the local community. Often conversations with passers by would start spontaneously with topics ranging from questions about what were they doing, to updates on local news and events happening in the neighborhood. Some of the community-sampled participants were born in the area. Their ancestors rooted in the Liberties for at least three generations. All of them remembered the visits to the dispensary officer in South Earl Street Health Center. People remembered him, and told us how he was still performing his job with the same rude manners portrayed in the story appearing in the MPL and how everybody hated going up to him to collect their prescriptions. Finding a character the audience members could relate to in real life, released a sense of confidence and achievement in the participants and pulled them right into the story, connecting the anecdote and the history of the place to their actual lives. Another evocative story on location was embedded in Braithwaite Street: two audience members’ parents used to live on that street and knew the family of the man portrayed in the anecdote. At one time, he was a familiar face in the Liberties, walking the streets selling coal from a horse drawn cart. Two participants, Liz and Meriel told us that when they were children they used to play in the shed where he stored the coal, even though it was dirty and full of rats. Other users also recall him shouting: "Coal" as his horse and cart criss-crossed the Liberties. When returning to the community centre for the focused discussions, people from the community centre would spontaneously join the conversation. Stories were volunteered about the poor conditions of the area in the past, and how men used to run to the pubs and bars as soon as they cashed in their salary came out; how women were not allowed to enter the pubs until recently, and used to have to ask a man they trusted to go to retrieve some of their husbands’ money before it was all spent on drinks; how people from the area still know today which houses originally belonged to the Guinness workers and which to the Jacobs factory workers, despite the fact that the Jacobs biscuit factory is not located in the area anymore and Guinness now employs very few Liberties residents. These sessions clearly indicated the interest of the community in participating and contributing to MPL expanding the story-database with old and new anecdotes about their neighborhood. Non-Residents Reaction
The non-residents trial of the MPL showed a variety of reactions. A general comment expressed was that the experience was interesting because it let them roam and explore an area that they would have never have got to know otherwise. The Dublin Liberties are a famous inner city neighborhood, well known for its disadvantaged conditions and despite its great history, people would not spontaneously adventure in this area. These comments show the potential of the MPL in encouraging an alternative type of tourism, geared towards areas not marked by the usual tourist trails. Many enjoyed listening to stories that would tell them about the origins, the old architectural structure and the socio-historical conditions of the Liberties. Stories about the Courthouse of the Liberties, or the Brabazon family, descended from the Lords of the area. Some of them expressed desires to know specific dates and facts about striking monuments such as the statue of the Jesus on Gray Street. John Gallagher, local community member, was present on location when Oscar, native from Cuba and living in Dublin, made the comment and John was able to answer the question immediately. This example and other similar episodes highlight how the system not only prompts memories and anecdotes about the neighborhood in local people but can also stimulate a dialogue between locals and visitors as they walk the streets of the neighbourhood with the hand held device. Some non-residents did not connect to local story characters, like Honora and her family, moving around the Liberties from house to house and job to job. They found those stories too fragmented to be able to synthesize them as a whole. We attribute such reactions in part to the fragmented nature of the narrative, but have identified a number of other possible reasons for this experience. For example, not being from the area and therefore not being able to connect the story fragments to similar stories that might have occurred in relatives’ a life was also an important factor. The lack of a cultural reference frame may have diminished their interest in and capability to relate to these kind story fragments. A few users originary from other areas of Dublin recognized that similar stories would exist even in their own neighborhood. This cultural reference would spark interest in the adventures of the Johnston family, struggling through economic highs and lows, moving premises around the neighborhood every few years and constantly dealing with the everyday problems of health and accommodation. Media Experts Reaction
The Media experts’ sample having very different areas of expertise focused on different aspects of the MPL. Media experts with technical background focused their attention on the GPS performance and software capabilities, while some multimedia experts would find the user interface and the iPaq platform even if simple enough to use, distracting from the story experience. Reasons ranged from the fact that they were engrossed in understanding the interface issues and because they were unfamiliar with the Liberties neighbourhood and therefore the navigation of the real space was a demanding task. Rainer, a German writer with multimedia experience, felt the stories were too fragmented to form a coherent narrative structure, considered from his traditional narrative point of view. He reported that the characters lacked motivations and psychological depth. Users more familiar with the fragmented nature of most interactive narratives, found the fragments pleasing and reported that the relationships between the fragments were engaging and motivated them to seek related story fragments. We can infer from these comments that the audience engagement and relative success of the non linear interactive aspect of the stories depends on the participant background and disposition towards alternative story structures, compared to more traditional forms. Some users observed that the link between a story and a specific location was not always obvious. Audience members from other categories reported this comment too, but the media experts were able to articulate more complex analysis and to suggest solutions of the phenomenon, such as combining a compass with the GPS technology to be able to direct the audience position more accurately towards the location where the story is set for example. Infact during the observation we noticed that due to the GPS resolution (approximately 10-15 meters), the audience was not always situated in the exact physical location when a story become available to them. Also their position in relation to the space varied from the side of the street they walked on, which way their gaze was directed and whether they stopped to view story fragments, or kept walking. Furthermore, the audiovisual media fragments did not always provide precise pointers as to their setting. Solutions were offered from having the narrator framing the exact landmark or building fro the audience to look at before starting the story visuals.
Through our study we targeted three main aspects of the work: the story design and content, the interface between the stories, and the place and the audience feel for the technology. Mirroring this focus, we have grouped our data in three main categories of comments: observations regarding the stories, the interface and the technology used. Story design The modular structure of the story collection evoked different responses. Some user were open to challenge their notion of traditional narrative structure and enjoyed the fragmented nature of the narrative; found it engaging and motivating to find more story parts to complete the picture. They often compared the experience to puzzle solving or a treasure hunt, like explorers or detectives in search of clues. Other users found the fragmented nature of the narrative confusing and frustrating. These users expressed a desire to be able to experience the fragments in a more linear, traditional way. A timeline was proposed, to facilitate to experience the stories in chronological order. There were also comments about the simple treatment of the characters. The main suggestion for strengthening the characters was to have them introduce themselves and contextualize their position in the Johnston family, i.e., informing the audience in which relationship they stand to the narrator. Infact, this was the approach that was actually implemented in the project. The narrator, who adopts the point of view of Maireen Johnston, the last surviving member of the Johnston family, talks in the first person and specifies the relationship of the characters to herself. For example: "Honora, my great, great, grandmother used to live in Pimlico…". Based on the users comments, this technique seemed to be insufficient to describe the complex web of Johnston ancestors who feature in the story fragments. Furthermore, the relationships among stories were not obvious to everybody. Suggestions to strengthen these links ranged from displaying trails on the map to highlight continuity between stories’ themes, to using the narrator to explicitly make connections with other stories and to pass on suggestions as to where the audience should go next to collect related stories. Additionally, as briefly mentioned in the media expert section, people from outside the neighbourhood,did not always find the story obviously linked to its relative location. Suggestions included starting each video clip with an image of the location to which the story relates, instead of having the location visualized somewhere in the middle of the clip, according to the demands of the story being told. Another suggestion was to use the narration to direct the audience’s gaze in the appropriate direction. For instance stories could commence in the following style: "Can you see the red brick building opposite South Earl Street no 8? That used to be the local Health centre." By explicitly naming and describing the important locations, the audience would familiarize themselves with the setting before the beginning of the story, without missing on the visuals or feeling confused about what they should be looking at. The stories were portrayed in audiovisual format. People generally enjoyed the visuals and the mixed media style from the re-enacted stories, to the old pictures representing the area as it used to be, to the use of watercolour sketches extracted from the storyboard.
People often commented they had to look at the video twice as the richness of the media combined with looking around the real place was overwhelming because they had to make contact with the surrounding architecture and locate where the story related to simultaneously. However only one person, reported that he would have preferred to experience the MPL just as audio narration. This was a positive and encouraging result in respect to our choice of portraying the anecdotes in audio-visual format: since the majority of similar locative media projects do not include video material and we had choosen to challenge the audio only format, spending a great amount of time and effort in producing the stories visually. The audience also commented positively on the different types of voices cast for the narration. Different users connected with one narrator more than another, to the point of really not enjoying some stories because of the narrator voice or accent. These comments highlighted the importance of attention to the artistic quality of the work in parallel with the interaction and interface design choices. Interface Design
The interface was generally reported to be easy to understand and use. The map had to be manually scrolled, which was lamented as distracting or confusing by some. Especially because the user position would sometimes fall out of the screenshot of the map. Suggestions of automatically re-centering the map around the user were proposed. On the other hand most of the users appreciated the manual scrolling, because it allowed them to explore the whole area and look for related stories that might have not been located in the same map portion shown on the screen. The navigational aids such as the radar view and cursor indicating the users’ position on the map following the GPS readings, were also reported useful and easy to understand. The markers that indicated the presence of the stories (The green dots indicating story presence in the area and icons indicating stories video clips) prompted a range of responses. A frequent comment was that the dots that show story locations on the map could have held more information. For example, dots of different colors could illustrate whether stories had been already viewed as many people were unable to remember which stories they had already seen, even when they returned to a previously visited location. The icons that appear on the map to indicate story availability were often considered cluttering rather than offering useful information, limiting the visibility of the map and of little descriptive value. The majority of the users commented that they would have like to be able to switch off the icons in order to be able to see the map more clearly. However, one user reported that he really enjoyed the icons richness, and found them colourful and pleasant. Some users suggested designing pre-tested trails on the map to encourage thematic tours or the ability to follow a specific character. Time based trails were also suggested such that people could choose a trail suitable for the amount of time available to them. The technology The technology used for the MPL (GPS-enabled iPAQ and the Pimlico custom made software platform) proved to be both simple to interact with and reliable. This was important because a significant portion of our target audience had limited experience with computer technology, and were expected to be reluctant to engage with the project for that reason. The simple interface we developed plays a considerable part in this success. The choice of an iPAQ for the experience was a good one. As a miniature portable cinema screen, the iPAQ delivers good quality audiovisual media that allowed the audience to engage with both the audio narration and the visual interpretation of the story. The fact that locations were not always immediately recognizable can only be partly attributed to the resolution of the GPS technology. Specific filming and narrative techniques (As explained in the section on the story design) could be combined with technologies which offer more accurate localization, such as Bluetooth beacons or RFID tags to ensure that stories can only be retrieved in the exact locations they related to. The smoothness of the technology performance on the hardware and software side made it easy for most audience members to focus on the stories. Understandably, people unfamiliar with the area had more difficulties. Rainer and Sara, a German and an American who had been living in Dublin for about six months found it hard to navigate around the new area, relate to the stories and the real locations simultaneously and coordinating where they had already been with where they wanted to go next. It is interesting to note that media experts and non-residents at times could become engrossed in or distracted by the system, but the Liberties community members focused on the content more easily despite being among the less computer literate users, paid little attention to the technology, using it simply as the tool to retrieve the stories.
conclusions
Through this initial broad user study, we have established that the project succeeded in enhancing a neighborhood space by making stories about the area available to the public in the places in which they happened. Through this mobile location-based narrative system place and stories were successfully coupled. As an indication of the overall MPL experience success, we can confidently state that all people who participated in the user study confirmed that they would like to have similar experiences available in other cities or in their own neighborhood. They generally preferred it to a guided tour as they had the freedom to choose what to explore, where to go next and how long to spend in each location. Most people preferred it to a book guide because of the ease of use and the fact that it engages them in walking around the streets of the neighburhood to be able to access the stories. It is also worth mentioning that the disadvantaged conditions of some parts of the Liberties makes guided tours and tour guides unlikely to happen in the area. Most people agreed that the MPL experience added atmosphere and warmth to the neighborhood and the fact that the stories were experienced in the place were they once occurred, did help achieve a sense of immersion in the stories in general. Most audience members felt totally engrossed in the experience, forgetting the time factor and that they were being followed as part of the user study procedure. Audience members reported that they moved from one story to another, from one location to the other totally immersed in the experience interrupting it only because of technical problems (such as the GPS inconsistencies or battery shortcomings). We read these results as signs that the MPL functions as an immersive experience. For community members in particular, the experience was twofold. On one hand they were able to discover new stories and anecdotes about the history of their neighborhood, a process they found extremely rewarding. On the other hand they were also prompted and stimulated to recollect and tell their own stories about the area. Furthermore, in several occasions, conversations and storytelling were prompted among audience members and locals. From these preliminary responses we can see the project successfully functioning as a catalyst for community awareness and the recollection of individual memories that could comprise a rich social history. The stories, in form of cinematic narratives, were highly appreciated even if sometimes perceived as overwhelming to take in at once with the surrounding cityscape. The issue was usually overcome by looking at the video more than once or repeating the tour. The interface design was generally felt to be intuitive and easy to use. The navigation aids were all useful but the dots and icons indicating story availability could have been more informative to avoid involuntarily returning to already visited locations. Through this first broad and detailed user study major strengths and weaknesses of the work have been identified and explained. It is clear that the MPL approach has potential for enhancing spaces, transforming them into something richer for both community members and more casual visitors. A strong positive feedback from the community itself showed potential in the direction of community storytelling and the recollection of memories by local residents. Our future work points in the directions of further investigations in location based mobile story systems for urban spaces. We are currently carrying out a second user study encompassing community members with strong links with the area, Dubliners and foreigners living in Dublin. With this second study we are looking for similarities and differences in the audiences experiences, how people from a city react to mobile narratives about their own city neighbourhoods. The findings will highlight further potential and future directions for mobile location based story systems for urban spaces, transforming spaces into places through uncovering their hidden stories.
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Joline Blais
Visitor
Precursors for Place-based stories - 2006/05/17 11:47I was intrigued to learn about the details of the MPL project, as my own work also focusses on narratives tied to place. I like the way you focus on a specific neighborhood, and work with stories that not only were tied to place, but also tied to a central character and therefore to each other. This is a complex narrative pattern. I'm also curious about authorship. While individuals "told" your team stories, who put them all together? Who was the grand architect, if there was one? And who do you think the audience was for the vignettes and for the 'master narrative"? I noticed you reflected on both "locals" (as a local, myself, I always cringe at this word), and tourists' experiences & will be comparing them in your next project--I'd be eager to learn what you saw were the issues here--to whom do the stories belong? to the place? to "locals"? to the "media artists"? to the tourists/visitors who use the system?
These are questions that have come up in my own work. A project I've just recently begun, started as a response to a threatened Liquified Natural Gas plant to be located on a sacred Passamaquoddy sweet grass site in the largest and most pristine bay of north coastal Maine. I learned that the site was linked to many stories and traditions, and that to eradicate the site would wipe out a good deal of culture and history. The "little people" still inhabit the site, I was told--both children playing games & adding their stories to the history, and the spirits of the place akin to gnomes or elves linked to the ceremonial sweetgrass. For a description of In the Presence of the Sacred in this forum try this link.
Of course the pattern of this LNG land grab has been replicated for almost all the land taken from indigenous peoples worldwide--their relationship to land is difficult for us to fathom, and hinges on relationship, not ownership, a relationship often expresssed through storytelling.
But place has more than a historical or tourist value for indigenous peoples. Each people developed a particular relationship to its own bioregion, expressed in their language, and through their stories. For some, like the Apache, these 'agodzaahi place-stories had moral power, reminding the person who walked by a place about consequnces for any given behavior. These stories always begin not with "Once upon a time," but with "It happened at such a place."
Australian Aboriginal Songlines map the entire continent of Australia with advice about where to find food, water, shelter, neighbors, enemies, dangers, etc. They are not just moral tales, but tales to ensure survival. Which was why death was a potential consequence to forgetting one's Songline. Our own modern databases pale by comparison to this living database spread across the minds and hearts of a people spanning an entire continent. This database has lasted for tens of thousands of years, while our technology becomes obsolete in a few years. So, though I work with , and teach, new media, I find myself humbled by the achievements of these peoples, and I wonder just what our technologies can offer them.
I find it encouraging that in projects like yours, new technologies attempt to return us to these "places", But there is a distressing irony in that the technological societies that generate ubuquitous computing and GPS are in a global war to exterminate indigenous peoples worldwide who already have sophisticated ways of relating story and place.
The Irish, an indigenous people who have long fought for their survival, have their own vivid storytelling traditions, which given Joyce's place-based odyssey, Ulysses, are likely to be very place-based. My question is this: did Irish place-based storytelling survive urbanization (in Joyce, for example?) Do neighborhood people still tell stories orally? If so, how does the media device change the nature of the storytelling? Is GPS more abstract than memory for Dubliners--as it seemd to be for those who did not equate the picture of the place with the actual place? What does it mean to make Dublin stories open to visitors, strangers?
It's so easy to get caught up with the newness of our technologies that we forget that we are reinventing the wheel, and often in a much degraded version, while we are destroying the originals, the aboriginals, the indigenous, the "locals".
Have you thought about how the next phase of your project could reflect more on the indigenous tradition of storytelling upon which it is based, and to see how the mobile mapping can help re-member, restore and recreate storytelling as a way to link not only people to place, but people to people, and people to all the living beings on this earth--which are all part of the "places" where we live. Ofcourse, that's a grand order for a hand-held device, but the real power of your piece seems to be the storytellers and their audience--with those most engrrossed oblivious of the tech--as you note.
Best luck with this terrific narrative work. Whatever can help Dublin/Irish storytelling flourish sounds to me like lots of fun as well as culturally dense and provocative.
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gertglheruithjkerht
Visitor
Re:Precursors for Place-based stories - 2006/06/02 04:24rtgkehrtghukawrehgjawsgbvergregehg
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valentina nisi
Visitor
Re:Precursors for Place-based stories - 2006/06/12 05:11Thanks so much for your intervention joline. It may take some time for me to touch on all your observations and questions, but they are very interesting and important points that you raise in your text and I would like to reflect on it, hoping that this will answer some of your questions.
While individuals "told" your team stories, who put them all together? Who was the grand architect, if there was one? And who do you think the audience was for the vignettes and for the 'master narrative"?
Who is the author and who is the target audience for the MPL are very important questions for this project. While in my previous work “Weirdvew” (for more information see: http://crossings.tcd.ie/issues/4.1/Nisi) the stories were collected by word of mouth from the community members, with the MPL the strategy was different. Despite an initial attempt to collect stories directly from the people living in the area, It was soon evident that the community was too big to use the same approach as for the Weirdview project. After trying to talk to people in the street asking for their availability to share stories, I organized to meet some community members for one to one conversations. This way I met Maireen Johnston, a writer that was born and grew up in the Liberties. Her family moved from the west of Ireland to the Liberties in the early 1800. Maireen wrote a book called “Around the banks of Pimlico” recounting her family history as well as anecdotes referring to local characters and social conditions of the area through the centuries. Together we toured the liberties while she was telling me stories of the place and the people that lived there at any one time, pointing me at locations that were relevant to her family and to the liberties community history. I ended up using her book as a starting point for the narratives. I selected a number of anecdotes from it concerning the history, the costumes and her family stories. From that material i produced the multimedia audio visual stories and built the web of content for the MPL. The intention was multi-folded. Firstly to stimulate local community members to recognize characters and situations that they had lived or stories that they had been told. Secondly to interest and attract people that did not belong to the community to to look at the area from a different point of view, rather than a guided tour through the historical buildings and facts of the area, I wished to provide a grass root history of the community with some historical framing. Media Experts (people that are familiar with new media from computers in general, music technology, multimedia, interactive storytelling etc.) , people living in the liberties area, and people external to the liberties, from Dubliners to foreigners living and visiting Ireland were asked to try the MPL. The results from the first study of the audience reaction to the MPL are described in the text I posted earlier.
i am going to write more about who the stories belong in the next few day! ciao for now, valentina
