Psychogeographic computing and theremin cities

The title is bigger than this thought: just want to get it down before it flies away. We can, with our location-aware devices and our addressable objects and our ambient interactions and our wireless connections and radio flying around everywhere, rid ourselves of screens and touchpads and styli and become the pointer ourselves. We can play the city with our bodies the way we can play a theremin with our hands: by being in this place and not that one.

When I was in Singapore working with the Zoo using mediascapes, I had a dream of marking out a giant touchscreen interface, with a start button and menus and buttons, on a football field, and using the software to let people become the mouse pointer, opening files by running across real space and clicking buttons by jumping on them (accelerometers in pockets).

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *