Art and audio in the aisles

Grocery stores are dizzying places. So many choices. So much information. Flashy packaging. Conflicting priorities. I've stood staring and hopeless at the wall of soup cans too many times to count. Do I choose price or flavor or nutrition or ingredient or serving size or natural or local? If Donovan McNabb's mother eats this soup, shouldn't I?

So how nice would it be if someone replaced those voices in my head with an artful, musical take on the grocery store experience? Apparently, Rotozaza has done that. The UK-based artists have produced a half-hour audio tour of the supermarket -- ANY supermarket with more than 10 aisles.

Director Silvia Mecuriali is quoted in this Australian newspaper story:

“It plays around with the ideas of consumerism, reclaiming public space and using it in a different way,” Mercuriali said.

“It takes a mischievous swipe at the dominance of supermarket culture and consumerism.”
But you don’t have to buy anything and the people around you become extras in your own private “guerrilla-style” show.

The 30-minute tour guides the shopper through food sections, with the music changing to reflect the frozen food area, dairy, and fruit and vegetables.

I'll review the audio if I can get a copy -- right now it's only available to people who buy tickets for another theater performance in Melbourne.

But here's what's interesting. This is a placecast that isn't tied to a specific place, but rather to a KIND of place. The audience has to be somewhere to appreciate it, but not necessarily in the same place it was recorded. This works because grocery stores in much of the world now have more similarities than differences -- a fact worthy of reflection in itself.

This isn't historical interpretation, but rather societal deconstruction. And audio is still the perfect medium. "Wearing headphones and anonymous behind your trolley [shopping cart]," the project's Web site says, "you are guided around the aisles immersed in a private world, as the carefully constructed sound scape overlays a fictional world that blurs the real with the imaginary."

Using sound as the primary medium allows the audience to still participate in the physical world, while their thoughts about that place are being directed and informed by the audio program. There's no need to stare at a smartphone screen or tap away on a laptop keyboard.

What other places in our world are similar enough for this kind of placecast? Would it work anywhere beyond the homogeneous world of retail stores, fast food joints...maybe airports?

I'll explore this whole concept further, driven in part by this intriguing line from the Rotozaza Wondermart press release:

Rotozaza are the pioneers of Autoteatro, a new kind of performance where, by receiving and following instructions through headphones, audience members assume the roles of both actor and observer and thereby create a self-generating piece of theatre.

Of course that makes everyone else in the supermarket unwitting extras in your own private performance. This sounds so much better than staring at soup cans.

(photos by Ant Hampton via Rotozaza)

Civic Tourism in Northeast Minneapolis

(UPDATE 8/29: The walking tours are available for download here: http://www.newalkingtours.com/)

I'm excited to attend the launch party this weekend for the new neighborhood walking tours of Northeast Minneapolis. I wrote about the project here. The folks at ArtShare pulled together a diverse group of volunteers to comb the community for stories and present them to neighbors and visitors alike via walking tours.

It seems the artists who conceived this project already understood something that the tourism industry has only recently started mulling over. It's called Civic Tourism.

I stumbled across this description today for an upcoming conference in Colorado:

"Civic Tourism’s mission is to 'reframe' tourism's purpose from an economic goal to a tool that can help the public enhance what they love about their place. It provides a forum for citizens to decide if, how, and for what purpose the ingredients of place (cultural, built, natural) can be integrated to create a dynamic, distinctive, and prosperous community. Ideally, Civic Tourism involves all stakeholders to build strong partnerships..." (emphesis added)

In other words, place matters because it is what every member of a community has in common. Communities that embrace place will have stronger internal ties (call it "culture") while appealing to visitors seeking an authentic experience.

But isn't that obvious?

I think the hyper-development of places like Wisconsin Dells, Branson, Missouri or Pigeon Forge, Tennessee indicates otherwise. Places once visited for their unique natural features now sprout indoor water parks and T-shirt shops. These attractions are economically successful, but they do not enhance the place around them (indeed, usually quite the opposite).

The Civic Tourism conference organizers seem to be proposing a different way to measure the benefit a communiy receives from the appeal of its place.

(As a journalist, I can't help but compare this notion to civic journalism -- the movement to treat readers and the community as participants in journalism rather than just consumers or advertisers. I also wonder if its fate will be the same...a good idea that is nearly impossible to implement in the context of a successful business model.)

Northeast Minneapolis is an up-and-coming neighborhood that isn't drawing tourists yet, but it is getting visitors from the rest of the city. So let's see what happens when the community is proactive about embracing place. I bet business can learn quite a bit from the artists.

The ArtShare walking tour release event is Saturday 8/29 from 10 to noon. Details here.

More on civic tourism here: http://www.civictourism.org/

Knowing where you're pointed

Lest we think "interactive mobile devices" are new to this generation, let's reflect a moment on the original...

While our new age devices can tell us where we are via WiFi triangulation (a la iPod Touch), 3G cell towers (a la iPhone) or GPS (a la Garmin), most aren't so great at knowing where we're looking when we're standing still.  This is called "orientation" and it's probably not the number one feature people are looking for in a gadget, but it has interesting implications for the idea of placecasting.

Compasses, while terrible at holding address lists and taking blurry photos, have always had the orientation thing nailed.  Standing still or on the go, this device has told mankind which direction he is facing...where to expect the sun, where to orient the temple, where to steer the ship or where to seek the stellar constellation.

That astronomical aspect is the point of a new Google program for Android-based devices that the folks at LatLong blogged about this week.   Since new Andriod devices have a compass built in, they know not just where you're standing, but also what direction you're facing. From LatLong:

Once you have a phone with a compass ("magnetometer"), a plumbline ("accelerometer"), and you can pinpoint your position (using GPS) and your time (using a clock), that's enough to work out which direction you're pointing in the Universe.

SO, with a relatively small data file, this allows the program to show you the stars you should be seeing in the sky in front of you on this date at this time.  This kind of technological convergence is really exciting, and the practical applications for the consumer will soon go far beyond stargazing.

Here's what it means for placecasting.  The curious New York visitor, looking at New York Harbor at, say Castle Clinton will likely have questions about what she sees across the water.  A device that knew her orientation could show her images like these (from GoogleEarth):

Sure, she knows that's the Statue of Liberty in the distance.  But she probably doesn't know that's the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge in the distance behind it.  A short podcast about it's relationship to the harbor in front of her would heighten her experience of the place.  For that matter, a podcast about the statue of liberty could enhance the experience of the visitor who doesn't have time to catch the boat out there.

When she turns to the South East, here's what she'd see.

A tap on the low building in front would tell her its the Staten Island Ferry Terminal (South Ferry).  Maybe it would even let her know how long a walk it would be to get there.  Maybe it would tell her there's a coffee shop inside or which subway line runs there.  A link to the ferry schedule would make sense, too.

If she cares about architecture, a tap on the building would let her know it's One New York Plaza , the southernmost skyscraper in Manhattan.

Turning back to the south, she'd see an island full of old buildings.

If the question is, "I wonder what all that is."  A tap on the image on her device would let her know it's Governor's Island and link her to information about the place and a short overview podcast about it in relation to the harbor and the city.  Maybe it even lets her know that she can download a more detailed audio walking tour of the Island if she wishes to go there and explore it firsthand.

Here's my point:
"What's that?" is not a question the Internet is very good at answering.  But the combination of GPS/compass devices along with tagged photos and audio information should finally be able to make finding that answer almost as easy as asking it.  Taking a tiny virtual world into the physical world should enhance real life, not distract from it.

Have phone, will podcast

Turns out a microphone isn't required to create podcasts.  Services like GCast.com let you literally phone it in.  Here's GCast's idea:

Start a phone-based audio journal of your life. Record your new baby's voice. Podcast jokes, tips, deep thoughts, or whatever. Record a "voice intro" before a song. If you're a musician, leave phone messages for your fans to share stories from the road or new lyrics from the studio. Your imagination is the limit!

Subtext: whatever the use, keep it brief.  It's hard to tolerate telephone audio for very long, and I can't really imagine subscribing to a phoned-in podcast, but there are some applications I can imagine.  Specifically, I think there is a Web 2.0 opportunity within the concept of Placecasting that hasn't been explored.

As we've learned in the radio business, "phone tape" is good for short and/or time-sensitive nuggets of information.  Urgency excuses poor quality.  Brevity conceals it.  And in brevity, there is freedom and accessibility.

What if you're sitting in a notable public place...say people-watching in Union Square , New York, or outside the Louvre in Paris ...and you're curious to hear what other people sitting in the very same spot had experienced in days or weeks before.  Using your mobile Web device and it's locational tools, you find a geo-tagged podcast of short commentaries recorded "on the spot" by people there before you.  One caller describes the mime performing for school children last fall.  Another describes how people scattered when rain started to fall in March.  Maybe another describes the sandwich she bought from the vendor nearby last week.

Now it's your turn to contribute.  Dial the toll-free number.  Enter the code specific to this location.  Tell your short story.  No more than a minute, say, so there's no pressure to be comprehensive.  Brevity.  Hang up and let the technology do the rest.  The next person to sit on your bench with their device, a measure of curiosity and a few minutes to spare, will hear your story.

It's micro-prose, all based in place...people sharing a common space but across an expanse of time and experience.