Screens in the Wild
This project brought together University College London, the University of Nottingham (Mixed Reality Lab, Computer Science), the London Borough of Waltham Forest, the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE) and Leytonstone Business Improvement District (e11bid) to investigate how the urban experience mediated through connected large screens can be designed to augment real world interactions, support communities, and promote and develop culture so as to maximise the quality of the public experience within the urban realm. Through an iterative prototyping methodology we integrate the content development, placement, local interactivity and distributed connectivity of four screen nodes connecting Nottingham with London. This set-up allowed us to explore remote connectivity by comparing two with three and four networked nodes, creating situations and experiences that differ in their urban settings and the types of populations they support through different seasons. We developed the screen content (such as applications and experiences) and evaluated mediated public interactions around these screens by engaging with the London Borough of Waltham Forest, the local communities around all four nodes locations, and commissioned artists in definition of the research challenges as well as in the programme of research itself.