E-Media Tidbits

Barbara Iverson This GPS-enabled HP IPAQ Pocket PC kept us (imperfectly) connected to the story around us.

Being part of a "locative narrative" means that you literally must be there, since everything in the story depends on GPS to trigger the narrative. On May 31, I joined 11 wanderers in Chicago's Washington Park to be part of an experiment in "locative journalism" (lojo). For this project I joined Northwestern University journalism professor (and fellow Tidbits contributor) Rich Gordon and his new media graduate students: Amy Lee, Hilary Powell, Hope Needles, Joyce Chang, Ki Mae Heussner and Satta Sarmah.

We used Hewlett Packard's mscape software to create a mediascape tour of Washington Park (not the race track) -- one of the proposed sites in Chicago's bid for the 2016 Olympics. The mscape site explains that "Mediascapes are location-based experiences, games, and tours on a handheld device." You can view and interact with mediascapes using a video-, audio-, and GPS-enabled HP iPAQ Pocket PC.

Our sojourn began at Loredo Taft's 1922 sculpture, Fountain of Time, at the west end of Midway Plaisance. There we each picked up an iPAQ with sun visor, headphones, and a laminated route map indicating way-points where parts of the narrative could be experienced along the way. We walked around the sculpture until the iPAQ picked up the location signal, and our "locative narrative" began. Chang noted that the signal was triggered by entering an area that was large enough to be easy to find -- it was not an exact intersection of two coordinates.

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The initial segments of our mediascape offered background on Chicago's Olympic bid, information about the local area, and a description of how the park was used by neighborhood people around WWII (narrated by local historian Timuel Black). Seeing historical photos overlaid on a place where was was standing was interesting. However, the images and video were hard to view in bright sunlight, even with the visor. I thought the audio was more engaging -- but when our route crossed a busy wide street, the audio might present a hazard to participants who get too engrossed to remember the physical world while engaging in a virtual overlay of the very real street.

The way-points, marked in the real world by real balloons, were easy to find. The device would begin its narrative as you came within its defined target. If you wanted to start over, you could move out and then back into the geotagged area to trigger the narrative again. Since each story was linked to a particular set of coordinates, the story could not play out of order.

One problem: the Google map we were given was not scaled for walking. An effective scale for walking or biking is about a half-inch to represent every mile. Google maps generally are scaled for driving distances. Walking or biking locative work requires a different sort of navigation from driving -- so instructions such as "turn right" or "look to your left" don't work so well. I recommend displaying a compass rose on the GPS device screen and giving instructions such as "turn north" or "look east." Also, the balloon way-markers were ripe for passersby to appropriate.

At our final way-point, the historical narrative gave way to video interviews with current community leaders who argued the pros and cons of using the large athletic field stretching about half a mile in front of us. I thought this part of the mediascape cried out for maps and site plans, which weren't included because they are not available from the Olympic committee, according to Gordon. Looking out at multiple soccer games and spectators enjoying the day and the open expanse of the park, while hearing about the huge proposed stadium that would push their games out of this public space, demonstrated that this innovative combination of hardware, software has the potential to create powerful journalism.

Read more about Northwestern's lojoconnect project, and see some photos of our walk.