Tutorial
To focus on how to tell these stories to the public, we came up with an idea that we could put several pieces of different texture together on a wall to let people touch them. These textures are from different ages so that people could know the history of culturemile area. Our tutor suggests that our idea is not a good experience for most people. People would not like to touch the walls with different materials unless it's soft or warm. So we arrange our idea again and want to do more interview about people`s feeling about the history.
Research
We head to Barbican again. In the area, we asked people in Barbican about there feeling of the history of Barbican. Most of them said that they want to know more about the history in the area. And some of them said that they don`t know about the bomb history in Barbican. They also don't know about the history of the time before Barbican was built.
After that, we head for lunch and we found that the bridge is a good place to work with because we walked through the bridge every time when we leave Barbican centre heading to the Moorgate station.
On the bridge, we did a behavioural mapping. It helped us recorded the directions people were heading and how many people were going through the bridge.
We ask some people walking on the bridge and found that most of them are heading to the White Cross Market for packing up lunch. We follow the flow of people and found that lots of office workers buy lunch in the market and take them back and find a place to eat.
Then we found that people have their lunch in different places. A lot of people walk back through the bridge and have lunch in their office. Some of them have lunch at the Barbican Centre and some of them have lunch on the benches in the sun.
We also found another park with a great wall near the Barbican Centre.
So we had some discussion and thought of two plans:
Plan A
1 The Bench Park with ancient London Wall
Our researches have shown that workers want to escape their office and change their senses during lunchtime. Even if they just have one hour or two hours lunch break, they will rush to a cafe or some food markets like "White Cross Market" to buy lunch. Most of them will sit at the outdoor benches or chairs inside the Barbican Centre. Some are enjoying their self-time, some are enjoying lunch with friends. But what attracted our attention, is the limited warm seating areas. We saw a lot of people and workers sitting on the floor of the Barbican to have their lunch break.
Therefore, we thought about using the bench parks that are situated in that area as our medium for a public intervention that offers warmth and combines historical elements and stories in order to engage the workers during lunchtime.
In order to create a warm comfortable area for the workers to use, we suggest providing an automatic heating system for every bench. During the winter, we can give the user a warm ambience when they are using the bench to have lunch/ read books/ chat with friends. The heater will be installed inside the "Arches". We will use the arches as a continuation of Raman Wall so that it can blend in with the surrounding environment. At night, each arch will light up when the bench is used. So when you have a lot of people sitting in that area, the area will be strongly lit by the arches creating a kind of social connection. Below each bench, we will also design Mosaic to represent the historical stories from the area. So each bench has a different story to tell. At the edges of each mosaic, we have a footprint metal. When users tap twice on the metal, the related historical stories of the mosaic will be played so they can listen and learn more about it.
So this is a long term design that can create a new way and medium to engage our audiences. We believe that creating a comfortable ambience for people to have conversations with themselves, with their friends, with the environment or even the public through different interactive benches and historical arches, can change their perception in the cultural mile area. We can also change the theme of the benches and arches by every season so that it can match the feelings and stories and also create the variegation.
Plan B
2 The Gilbert Music Bridge
Another aspect that we found interesting is the route in which the office workers take during their lunch break. We did some interviews on the bridge and found that a lot of people will pass the bridge across the Barbican Water Gardens. These people could be commuters, citizens and visitors. During the lunch break, which is between 12 and 2, the workers walk through the bridges for lunch. In the evening, people inside the Barbican centre walk through the bridge to the Moorgate station. And citizens inside the Barbican area will go through the bridge heading for different transportation.
The bridge is a popular place, so it`s a good place for people to have conversations with the area. We want to use the bridge as the medium to let people feel the senses of belonging in the Barbican area. The whole culturemile area is surrounded by music and art. Concerts are quite popular inside the Barbican centre. And the Guildhall School of Music and Drama is just inside the Barbican area.
We want to play some concert music on the bridge to light up people`s mood when they are passing by the bridge. And since commuters are passing by quickly during lunchtime. We add some interactions to let people engage with the bridge and create the music together.
When there is one person walking on the bridge, the speaker starts to play music. The speed of the music will change as the walking speed of the person changes. When the person walks fast, the music plays at a fast speed. If the person walks slowly, the music plays at a lower speed. When more people walking on the bridge, more instruments will be added to the music. So if there are enough people on the bridge, it will feel like a concert is playing.
The wall on the bridge is decorated with symbols of the instruments in a concert. So people walking pass by could know the instruments that appear in the music. The music could be classical music or some musical works in recent concerts as advertisements. In these ways, people would feel relax and enjoyable when they are walking on the bridge and feel a sense of belonging in this area.
MidPoint Presentation
The feedback from the presentation is:
1 The Bench Park with ancient London Wall
Try to change the materials of the heater and try to affect people in another way.
Maybe not use mosaic, think of other interactions. Let them share their stories or let them create the place. Maybe people can leave their mark to the area.
They gave us an example of geo coaching. (https://www.geocaching.com/account/welcome)
2 The Gilbert Music Bridge
Pay attention to the volume of the sound. Installations should not be annoying or affect people’s life.
They also said that they really like the second idea.
Tutorial by John & Mor
1The London wall
Our idea should be more practical. Maybe we can heat the seat instead of making arches. For the position of the heater, we can change it and arrange it in a circle way so that people can sit around and face each other. In this way, people can communicate with each other and build social relationships.
eg. William Whyte. <The social life of small urban spaces >
2Bridge
The interactions of the installation could have lots of layers. It could be from easy to special to enlight people. We should think of the playlist of the music and separate them into different categories such as music for different seasons, different time of the day or different holidays. Information of the music can be put in someplace to let people download the music. We can also get feedback from the audience through a QR code. And maybe make it to be a competition and we can design the rule of the competition. The trumpet on the bridge is a good symbol, we can use them in many different areas so that we can connect those places together and guide people to the Barbican centre.
Plans
We chose plan B after discussions.
And we planned to choose 3 areas to put music in the area and picked the Barbican bridge as the most important location. Then we went to guildhall school and barbican library to find some book and information about concert and music. We separated our work and find some music of Beethoven in different instruments and try to make a piece of music.
Next week, we plan to do some prototypes.
Reflection
We could use music apps with different instruments to make music and test our ideas.
Reference
Levent, N., & Pascual-Leone, A. (2014). The Multisensory Museum Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives on Touch, Sound, Smell, Memory, and Space. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.
Stein, B.E., &Meredith, M.A. (1993). The Merging of the Sense. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
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