SiteSpecific
An app that asks you to put your phone away — and then makes the street respond to you.
I — The workConcept
SiteSpecific is an app that takes visitors out of the screen and into the reality around them. Festival-goers download the application, put their phones back in their pockets and walk. Throughout the streets of the Musrara neighbourhood, a set of interactions responds to their presence.
PathTaken displayed visual heat maps of the visitors' movements across the festival. Guides wearing LED-lit arrows roamed the grounds, their arrows constantly pointing towards the nearest attraction. QuickStep followed walkers along a path and gave them a soundtrack — on the uphill stretch, heavy breathing.
II — DocumentationPlates
III — The storyMaking & meaning
The title is a provocation. Site-specificity is a sacred term in public art; we applied it to the most placeless object of all, the smartphone. The work proposes that the phone could make you more present in a place, not less — if it stayed in your pocket.