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WhatIsAMediascape
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What is a mediascape?
There are several different explanations here, they are all describing one basic underlying idea, so you do not have to read them all, just read until you understand what mediascapes are about.
If you want to read more about mediascapes in the real-world, who is using them and where they are being used, then have a look at the section; ‘More about mediascapes’.
A short description
“A mediascape is a collection of media fragments associated with positions in space. You experience the media fragments as you walk around the space.”
Someone assembles a collection of digital media. That media (sound, pictures whatever) is spread out across a building or a landscape and associated with regions of space. This collection of media is then loaded onto a mobile device that monitors where it is and plays the appropriate bits of media according to its position. When you use that mediascape on the mobile device, the different bits of media play as you walk through the space.
A simple example
The mediascape
I have an open field. Somewhere in that field I have defined two circles, one within the other. When you enter the large circle an audio file is played that says ‘warning deadly plant’. When you progress from that circle to the inner one an audio file says ‘deadly plant has got you! End of game’.
The mediascape experience
You only know that there is a dangerous plant and that you should proceed with caution. You wander around the open field and eventually hit the outer circle, and hear the warning. You can move back from it and by approaching it from different sides you can work out the extent of the warning area. If you are moving too fast they will walk straight through the warning area and be into the ‘deadly plant has got you’ area.
Further illustrations
A technical description
Digital media files of sound, video, text etc. are stored in a structure that associates them with positions from a GPS system. They are stored on a portable digital device like a mobile phone or a PDA, which is GPS enabled. As you move around, this device senses your position and activates the appropriate media file which is presented via headphones or the screen of the device.
A mediascape is like... a treasure hunt
A treasure hunt game is a good analogy. Both are concerned with locating information in the space around us. In a treasure hunt the organiser sets a trail of clues throughout a building, for followers on foot, or an area of the country-side, for followers in cars.
Although each clue is an individual thing they all link together to provide an overall experience for the people following them. The whole project usually has to be well mapped out and thought through before the clues are located in their hiding places.
A mediascape is like... commemorative plaques
One of the key concepts of mediascapes is the idea of attaching media to physical places in the world around us. There are many other things possible with mediascapes but the most basic idea is just this, it is a way of associating text or other digital media with a point, or region in space.
A good analogy of this are the ‘blue plaques’ that you see in some historic city centres. They are plaques the size of a big dinner plate that are attached to houses and other structures and they contain a brief piece of text about the historical significance of that building or place. It could be the house where a composer was born, or where a writer wrote his most famous work, or it could be a new building built on the site of what was the first photographic studio in the country.
If you are a programmer...
If you are a programmer you may be used to environments where you build a program by creating a screen of objects (widgets, like buttons or sliders). The fragments of program code are then associated with these objects such that when you interact with them, certain parts of the code are obeyed. Sometimes this happens when you click on them, sometimes this happens when you just move the mouse over them (usually referred to as a ‘roll-over’). Thus the screen becomes a collection of regions that react as the cursor moves over them and through them. This is similar to the regions of a mediascape that are spread out over a physical area.
If you are a web designer...
If you have some experience of web design then you may be familiar with ‘image maps.’ A mediascape has some similarities to an image map in that it is to do with presenting or playing media associated with certain regions of a larger image or map that you can interact with. In web design you interacts with an image map by clicking on it. In mediascapes you interact by going to a region.
A scenario: Ian and Tom shake their PDA
As well as metaphors, scenarios can be helpful to illustrate new concepts. Here is someone else’s story about their mediascape experience.
“The media group at the located media project have tried something new; they have been recording people’s memories of the war and, instead of just releasing it all as a set of 5 CDs, they have split up a lot of the separate stories about specific places and created a mediascape across an area of the city centre.
Ian and I tried it out. We left a cash deposit for the PDA that was loaded with the content, took two pairs of headphones so that we could both listen to the same thing, powered it all up and set off. Right in the city centre most of the key buildings had memories associated with them so you didn’t have to go far before you started to hear someone talking about the time a bomb dropped clean through the roof of the museum, or how Frankie bumped into her dad while he was on duty as a fire warden.
We had a great time initially, but we didn’t read the bit in the leaflet about where the mediascape ended, and we soon found ourselves off the edge of the mediascape; wandering around interesting looking buildings without hearing anything. At first we thought the PDA had conked out. We shook it a few times but nothing happened. We told the located media people about this and they have said that they will add a big boundary to the mediascape so that when you exit the area it will quietly tell you that you are leaving and that there will be no content outside the area.”
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