Workshop III: Uncovering Urban Stories: a mobile location aware approach
Valentina Nisi and Ian Oakley, Madeira-Interactive Technologies Institute and Carnegie Mellon University-Portugal program
Dates: All day, October 13 – 14
Hours (tentative): 9:30-12:30; 2-5:30
Presentation of work: October 16 (PM)
Location: University of Porto
Language: English
Maximum number of participants: 20
Registration Fee: €50
Summary: This workshop will explore video shown on the emerging medium of location-aware mobile devices. These are systems capable of selectively presenting media to an audience who is out and about, engaged and interacting with a dynamic urban environment. The distinguishing quality of this media format is its powerful ability to deliver narrative experiences that merge with an audience’s physical context – the environment immediately surrounding them. However, it is also experienced on small screens and viewed in conditions with varying light and sound pollution. Furthermore, structuring narratives into fragmented segments distributed spatially and temporally presents new challenges to conventional story-telling practices. This workshop will explore the balance among these constraints. Its participants will be guided through the process of authoring, structuring and designing mobile, spatially distributed narratives. Working in pairs they will explore the city of Porto to unearth one or more situated stories. The processes of storyboarding, scripting and filming will be tutored to suit presentation on mobile devices. The workshop will culminate with a walking tour and public exhibition showing the stories in context.
The Urban Stories workshop targets film-makers: professionals, semi-professionals and students.
Valentina Nisi is an Assistant Professor at the University of Madeira where she teaches Service Design as part of the Carnegie Mellon|Portugal Program. Her research interests focus on bringing digital stories out into real space, merging architecture, environment and landscape with multimedia narrative experience. She holds a Phd from Trinity College Dublin, Ireland and worked for 4 years in MIT MediaLabEurope’s Story Networks research group investigating the potential of wireless mobile technologies in cinematic non-linear narratives.
Ian Oakley is an assistant professor at the University of Madeira and an adjunct assistant professor at the HCI Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. His research focuses on the design, development and evaluation of multi-modal and embodied interfaces. He holds a PhD from the University of Glasgow, UK and has spent three years doing post-doctoral research at MIT MediaLabEurope’s Palpable Machines group. He has also spent two enlightening years working in industrial R&D in South Korea.
