Last week’s Location-Based Storytelling symposium at Bournemouth University, organised by Bronwen Thomas was a treat for someone like me who’s become increasingly obsessed with digital projects that involve any kind of walking and/or mapping.
Speakers included:
- Martin Rieser talking about an enviably rich body of work ranging from the D H Lawrence Blue Line Trail to a beguilingly wiggy transmedia project called The Third Woman (loosely based on The Third Man and involving, amongst other things, QR coded underwear!
- Robert Clark talking cogently not only about how he has mapped the works of Defoe and Austen but *why* - revealing Austen to be a much more acutely political writer than I previously imagined.
- Jerome Burg demonstratnig Google Lit Trips to great effect. His mapping out of The Grapes of Wrath in GoogleEarth is a must-see if you’re into this kind of thing.
The *real* treat for me, though, came the next day when we enticed a small group of people out to Dorchester to play with The Haunter box that Joe Flintham and I have been developing.
A big thank you goes out to Karl, Bronwen, Becca, and Steph for being prepared to offer their thoughts about the project, and also to read out some poetry. Here they are introducing themselves:
Extra big thanks, too, to Giles and Haz of Proboscis who produced a fantastic booklet for us to use during the walk for taking notes and reading poems. I’m intending that one of the outputs for this project will be a publication – using Bookleteer – that can be a contribution to the ongoing City As Material series (By the way, if you haven’t checked out the Professor Starling booklets in this series, you really should.)
I've put a couple of videos up on Youtube that give a flavour of the day:
And also there are a set of recordings on SoundCloud including this outdoor conversation about the 'magic' of going to places where great writers worked (listen out for the cyclists that interrupt us and the dogs):
Key findings from the day included:
- The box does take on a talismanic quality quite quickly. The walkers ‘invest’ in it in some way.
- Knowing the Hardy backstory about his first wife – or at least having that story revealed, in parts, as one progresses along the path, does seem to give the walk more structure and purpose. A box that simply recites poetry and records walkers is not enough.
- The social element of the walk and the shared burden/joy of the box is VERY important. The box doesn’t belong to one person and it doesn’t just talk to one person (unlike a mobile phone or tablet app that would play out from a device that was owned by one walker and packed with their own personal apps and data).
- Capturing the ad hoc conversations that go on between members of the group and recording their ‘readings’ and thoughts is also VERY important. The sense that this is a walk that is happening *right now right here with these specific people* is somehow heightened by the ritual of carrying the box to a graveyard.
- Reading out loud in public – in the public highway - is a very good thing and people should do more of it. I kind of knew this already.
- The sounds of the birds, the river, the grass, the traffic etc are a fundamental part of the project. The mixture of listening to the box, to other people and to the sounds of the place itself becomes a bit ‘magical’.
- The box seems to concentrate the senses in a way, so that you listen and look harder. This should be a key purpose of the project, I think.
- There is scope for theatricality here. The box (and the booklet?) can force certain behaviours in the walkers such as one person walking off into the distance, the walkers progressing in single file, the walkers forming a circle, one group of walkers lagging behind or taking a slightly different route.
- The combination of local craft (the box itself), electronic engineering expertise (the circuitry inside the box), the booklet writers & publishers, and the walkers (hopefully of any age and background) really appeals to me as a truly interdisciplinary project. I particularly like the idea of The Haunter embodying a marriage of new and old ‘crafts’.
- Bringing the sound of the sea to Emma’s grave is a satisfying ending, I think.
- All in all, this was a delightful day (the weather and the company were equally glorious). But it also gave me a feeling for the first time that Joe and I are really on to something here.
- The box is *not* just an app in disguise and it does produce a different effect and outcome to a project developed for a smartphone or a tablet.
We’re hoping to go out again in late July, so if anyone is interested in joining us, please get in touch.
After that, the future of the project will be subject to us finding some funding. For now, though, I remain encouraged and excited by the potential for walking around towns and the countryside carrying a ‘haunted’ wooden box.
Comments