Report: Digital Cities Seminar - Presentation 4: Giles Lane

The public arts practice Proboscis have been making use of mobile mapping technologies in a less technical way than many of the other speakers; as Giles would have it: people focused. A short film, “Play to Invent” gave a survey of their recent projects Much of this work emerged from Giles' involvement with Professor Roger Silverstone; considering mobile technologies within the context of public relations in the department of Sociology of Media. The community project “Urban Tapestries” developed into a research study “Social Tapestries”; this engaged school children with mobile phone technology and provoked them to make narrative representations. However, the project also required a very hands-on approach to making; the narratives were assembled onto cardboard cubes that were then assembled into different 3-D combinations. Another intervention used carnivalesque characters to sniff into pollution levels in a part of East London. The specially created costumes incorporated sensors that directly mapped pollution levels back into interactive on line computer maps; this produced a community owned resource concerning pollution that could critically stand alongside the government data. The success of Proboscis' use of technology seems to be the strategy of socially engagement and offering enough hands on participation, alongside the gadgetry; to mix metaphors a little: their practice is as much manual as it is as digital.

Proboscis Website

Proboscis Films