Passing Glances by Cati Vaucelle
in collaboration with Katherine Moriwaki, Sven Anderson, Glorianna Davenport and Linda Doyle
Ambient Interludes from the Dublin Cityscape
With colleagues at the University of Trinity College Dublin, I have explored a similar interface concept to Textable Movie: Passing Glances.
Imagined for installation in an urban, public space (bus stop, train station, etc.), Passing Glances invites people to use SMS messaging on their cell phones to post images or video to a public display board. Display boards in different cities would be connected to one another. The system intelligently draws in other imagery to support the content of what users posted to the board. The goal was to have individuals describe their physical space in a substantial way, without the limitations of distance.
Through the supportive research on this application, I found that
users were initially using SMS to experiment with the system, but
then quickly
preferred to make the unknown crowd react through anonymous posting
to co-located users. On hindsight, this project had interesting
implications for how digital technologies can mediate between
how we assert ourselves
privately and publicly within the physical space. Connected to a
server, each user’s cell phone could browse inside of their
personal computer to display videos, pictures, and sound files.
This was done privately
and anonymously. The SMS media (picture, text, and audio) posted
to the display board could only be retrieved by certain users
at a reasonable
distance. Because these messages are unpredictable, they create an
atmosphere of surprise and excitement. People were motivated
to explore the relationship
of private and public roles through the act of anonymous posting
in the physical space.
Shots captured from Dublin, Ireland and retrieved in Passing Glances
More information
Previous Passing Glances' web site
Ambient Urban Interludes: Passing Glances by Vaucelle, C., Moriwaki, K., Doyle, L., Anderson, S., and Davenport, G. In Proceedings of Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems CHI '04 Vienna, Austia, 24-29 April 2004. ACM Press.
Texting Glances: Ambient Interludes from the Dublin Cityscape by Vaucelle, C., Davenport, G., Wood, A., Anderson, S., Doyle, L., and Falk, J. Case study Enarrative 5 Hypertext. Narrative. Art. Tech., Boston, MA, USA, May 2003
Passing Glances was created by Cati Vaucelle, Katherine Moriwaki, Sven Anderson under the supervision of Glorianna Davenport and Linda Doyle. It started as a collaborative effort between Cati Vaucelle, Glorianna Davenport, Alison Wood, Sven Anderson, Linda Doyle, Jennica Falk, and Katherine Moriwaki.
Selected Press
Passing Glances on Textually