Projects that locate experiences in geographical space usually involve an approach that favours either the point or the path. Each approach has strengths and weaknesses, and sometimes a solution is to attempt to include both kinds of information within a project. Some examples:
\\[murmur] – The Point\\
[murmur] is a project that geo-locates stories. Specific points in space are marked with a sign; users are invited to call the telephone number on the sign to listen to a story about that very spot while experiencing the space where the story took place. [murmur] is poetic, it hangs the ghosts of the past on the structures of the present. The stories are sometimes charming, sometimes quotidian, but either way, they never fail to alter the perception of a point in space.
\\[murmur] – The Path\\
But how should one navigate [murmur]? The map of activated points (viewable on the website) sprawls over several city blocks, and the project itself lives in three different cities. By not offering paths through the project, I presume that the creators wish the experience to be somewhat random, a self-guided tour. But which thread is the most compelling? How can a user’s experience of the project be guided to produce maximum effect? By encouraging one story to follow another, the equivalent of a narrative arc be created. Would it be useful to view the path one should follow to hear all the stories about certain things? Perhaps as a user I’d like to take the “broken hearts” path and hear all the love stories, or if I’m in the mood for something less personal, the “historical” path to hear what buildings used to be. This would involve classifying stories, deciding which categories should exist, and possibly filing some stories in more than one category. It also would be interesting to map user paths. With an analysis of user logs, it would be easy to generate the paths of users through [murmur] – who listened to which stories and in which order, which may serve to analyze how foot traffic generally traverses the areas of town where [murmur] is installed.
\\Teletaxi – The Point\\
Teletaxi is a project that uses GPS to deliver location-specific video content to passengers in a taxicab. When the taxi passes through activated areas, video clips related to the location play on the flat screen installed in the taxi. In addition to relating content to the point, content is also triggered by states – when the taxi doesn’t move for a period of time, video works that address the lack of movement are launched.
\\Teletaxi – The Path\\
This project also may benefit from some ordering of the types of content, to produce paths for the user that would reflect a subset of interests. Certain classifications of content are already obvious – by artist or by neighbourhood. Is it beneficial to add further classifications to the type or style of content? Perhaps this could be considered to be a kind of curation within curation, a creation of subthemes to a project where the larger unifying theme is simply location specificity.
\\The Point and the Path Live Happily Ever After\\
PDPal is a project that enables users to map their “emotional GPS”, by either using the web or a PDA to annotate their experience of Times Square in New York. Users select from a host of icons when choosing to place a point on their map, and can annotate it with text. In addition, however, users can mark their path, which offers a whole other layer of information about your experience in Times Square – did you get lost? Where did you start and where did you end?, et cetera. The addition of path information furthers the individualization of the space, since it would be rare that two users would take the exact same path. Viewing how you navigated Times Square also enables a remembrance of experiences as they happened over time (“Oh yeah, first we went there, then took a wrong turn and ended up over there…”) The creators of PDPal also have generated a number of exercises that they sometimes conduct with open groups, where interested parties gather to experience the project, but with a mission, such as: make an “Official Field Guide”, behave as though you are an anthropologist from an alien planet, use an algorithm to guide your walk, etc. By using these exercises, navigation is also effected, and the history of that effect is apparent in the paths created.
The point and the path, when they act in unison, can be a very powerful way of mapping experience. They are each interesting methods on their own, though I have to admit I find the path more compelling for its ability to act as a timeline of events as well as a spatial representation. My thoughts on the projects above and the possible uses for paths within them may be unworkable or unnecessary, but raise an interesting question about what information is useful to provide or collect when working with location specificity. What is of greater concern – the points of interest or the ways that people flow between them?