| Field |
Value |
Language |
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dc.contributor.author |
Heyward, ME
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3146-2569
|
en_US |
|
dc.date.issued |
2017 |
en_US |
|
dc.identifier.citation |
ELO 2017: Affiliations, Translations, Communities, 2017 |
en_US |
|
dc.identifier.uri |
http://hdl.handle.net/10453/115024
|
|
|
dc.description.abstract |
The Alchemist’s Guide to the City is a digital media app for mobile phones in which the philosophical notions of the medieval alchemists are used as a filter for the contemporary world. Comprising 26 app screens, 18 overlay screens, 9 sound files. Written, designed and programmed by Megan Heyward. Illustration by Grace Felstead, sound design by Michael Finucan. Exhibited at international electronic literature conference and exhibition ELO 2017, Porto, Portugal, July 18-22 2017. |
en_US |
|
dc.format |
Digital media / mobile app |
en_US |
|
dc.publisher |
Proto.io |
en_US |
|
dc.relation.ispartof |
ELO 2017: Affiliations, Translations, Communities |
en_US |
|
dc.title |
The Alchemist's Guide to The City |
en_US |
|
utslib.location |
Porto, Portugal |
en_US |
|
pubs.embargo.period |
Not known |
en_US |
|
pubs.organisational-group |
/University of Technology Sydney |
|
|
pubs.organisational-group |
/University of Technology Sydney/Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences |
|
|
utslib.copyright.status |
open_access |
|
|
pubs.consider-herdc |
true |
en_US |
|
pubs.place-of-publication |
Porto, Portugal |
en_US |
|
pubs.rights-statement |
Research background- FOR 1902. The AHRC Ambient Literature research project investigates the aesthetic and location based potentials of literary content delivered by mobile apps, such as Duncan Speakman’s It Must Have Been Dark By Then and Tom Abba’s These Pages Fall Like Ash. Megan Humphries Six Stories of Southampton convey the multiple histories of the Solent river through a mobile locative app tying historical narrative to place. The Getty Research Institute’s 2017 exhibition ‘The Art of Alchemy’ situates medieval alchemy as a protoscientific practice, emphasising its ongoing impact across scientific and philosophical thought. The Alchemist’s Guide to the City is a digital media app for mobile phones in which the philosophical notions of the medieval alchemists are used as a filter for the contemporary world. The work asks: How might historical and philosophical contents be delivered to audiences in ways which draw upon location specificity and reframe contents within a contemporary app context? Research contribution. The project identified several techniques for reframing historical contents within a mobile app context: the use of common app affordances and responsivity while disrupting user interface norms by integrating atypical design approaches such as serif fonts and hand drawn illustration; the utilisation of location specificity via guided instructions and navigation path to maximize the experiential affordances of location; and the use of sound design to infer connections between past and present. Research significance. The work was exhibited at the internationally peer-reviewed Electronic Literature Organisation’s conference and exhibition in Porto, Portugal in July 2017. |
en_US |
|
pubs.rights-statement |
Research background- FOR 1902. The AHRC Ambient Literature research project investigates the aesthetic and location based potentials of literary content delivered by mobile apps, such as Duncan Speakman’s It Must Have Been Dark By Then and Tom Abba’s These Pages Fall Like Ash. Megan Humphries Six Stories of Southampton convey the multiple histories of the Solent river through a mobile locative app tying historical narrative to place. The Getty Research Institute’s 2017 exhibition ‘The Art of Alchemy’ situates medieval alchemy as a protoscientific practice, emphasising its ongoing impact across scientific and philosophical thought. The Alchemist’s Guide to the City is a digital media app for mobile phones in which the philosophical notions of the medieval alchemists are used as a filter for the contemporary world. The work asks: How might historical and philosophical contents be delivered to audiences in ways which draw upon location specificity and reframe contents within a contemporary app context? Research contribution. The project identified several techniques for reframing historical contents within a mobile app context: the use of common app affordances and responsivity while disrupting user interface norms by integrating atypical design approaches such as serif fonts and hand drawn illustration; the utilisation of location specificity via guided instructions and navigation path to maximize the experiential affordances of location; and the selective integration of historical and creative contents to infer connections between past and present. Research significance. The work was exhibited at the internationally peer-reviewed Electronic Literature Organisation’s conference and exhibition in Porto, Portugal in July 2017. |
en_US |
|
pubs.rights-statement |
ERA statement Megan Heyward FOR 1902, Film, Television and Digital Media. The Alchemist’s Guide to the City The research sits in FOR 1902 Film, Television and Digital Media. Jeremy Hight’s 34N118W annotated oral histories to city locations, creating a locative media work in which cities become “alive with unseen history, stories, layers”. Paul Carter’s public artworks craft conceptually rich experiences of place that “reintegrate reading with treading and remobilize the relationship between people and place”. Gerard Goggin emphasises the cultural and imaginative potentials of location-based mobile media, calling for applications allowing “alternative practices of placemaking outside the confines of the select options on offer”. The research question asks: How can mobile technologies be used to create an alternate and conceptually rich experience of city locations and histories? The Alchemist’s Guide to the City responds to this question in two ways: 1. It combines and expands on Hight’s notion of cities enlivened by hidden histories and Carter’s place-based textual practices, 2. It creates a mobile app prototype offering a model for alternative experience of city locations and histories. Research contribution New academic knowledge is produced by: 1. Drawing on the above literature to integrate three distinct types of content: historical, place-based and imaginative. This remix opens up locations to be interpreted in new ways as audiences walk the city. 2. Creating a prototype template for the development of mobile apps engaging with historical contents and locations. Research significance The project was developed for the internationally peer-reviewed Electronic Literature Organisation conference and exhibition in Porto, Portugal in July 2017, and offers a model that can be applied to other locations. |
en_US |
|
pubs.rights-statement |
The Alchemist’s Guide to the City (AGC) is a locative artwork in FOR 1902 (Film, Television and Digital Media), specifically the emerging field of creative-critical practice using digital technology to map, intervene in and rethink “place”. Research Background AGC builds on recent research into digital media ‘interventions in which geographical space becomes a canvas’ (Hemment 2006). For Iverson (2014), locative media is ‘at the forefront of experimentation’ regarding ‘interactions between embodied and sensory practices, locational awareness…and annotated urban space’. For Berry (2014), mobile media helps us ‘rethink space and place’ and explore ‘co-presence, embodied phenomena, and temporality’ through ‘evocative and sometimes surprising’ interventions. AGC intervenes in new creative-critical ways into our sensory and temporal experience of place. It achieves this through a novel mobile artwork that reframes a set of city locations and generates location-specific, sensory and temporally disruptive experiences. Research Contribution AGC combined Google streetview and mapping technology, text, illustration, audio and digital prototyping to annotate and reframe a set of city locations, providing an alternate ‘lens into the past’ that reconfigures our sense of place and time through making visible overlooked, contentious histories. Research Significance The project was exhibited in Porto, Portugal as part of ELO 2017, the leading international conference and festival of interactive artwork and electronic literature ‘dedicated to the investigation of literature produced for the digital medium’, and offers an important example of how innovative critical and creative research can be applied in this field. |
en_US |
