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Mobile Digital Commons Network (MDCN) Projects

By Paula Gardner and Geoffrey Shea

The mobile digital commons network aimed to create innovative and artful experiences using mobile phones, which, at the time of their emergence had few capabilities. We used employed ethnographic methods and experimental art based practice and interdisciplinary practice with artists, engineers and computer scientists to speculate about how we might play and make art in park-based settings using mobile devices. We experimented with a range of methods that supported interdisciplinary teams and enable innovative experimentation ranging from Brainstorming, bodystorming, and iterative design cycles to design charettes. Our team-created Mobile Experience Engine, a software development kit, enabled us to create advanced applications and media-rich experiences on mobile devices. Because phones were not “smart” at this time, we engaged carry-along GPS sensors, Soviet spy devices to capture location data, and prototyped devices to cache data in spaces to enable interactive, locative game play. These early locative and mobile experiences constitute ground-breaking work in the field.

Creative Leads: Paula Gardner and Geoffrey Shea
MDCN Principle Investigators: Sara Diamond and Michael Longford
Engineers: Tom Donaldson, David Gauthier, Jagmit Singh, Sukhmeet Singh, Ken Leung and Rob King;
Research Coordinator: Jenny Ziemianin; Research Assistants: Nevena Nilogova, Yvon Julie, Bryn Ludlow, and Peter Todd; 
Charette participants: Mark Poon, John Pavicic, Nigel Craig, Jennifer Johnson, Fiona Chung, Jennifer Johnson, Eliseo Reategui, Blaze and Carrie Young.

MDCN Project 1: Alter Audio

The Alter Audio project was an experiment in interactive, locative-based sound experiences, designed using early mobile phones, exploring their technical possibilities and the diverse social and spatial interactions possible in a mobile experience as well as potentials for co-created artwork. The resulting prototypes are presented in the following pieces, focusing on providing conceptual interactions with sounds offering both metaphorical and proximal locative, spatial experiences in relation to distinct Toronto and Banff spaces.

Research Team

Creative Leads: Paula Gardner and Geoffrey Shea
MDCN PIs: Sara Diamond and Michael Longford
Engineers: Tom Donaldson, David Gauthier, Jagmit Singh
Research coordinator: Patricio Davila
Research Assistants: Ken Leung, Nevena Nilogova
Production Interns: Mark Poon, John Pavicic, Nigel Craig
Sound Design: David Ogborn

Prototype of Alter Audio Experience, in Grange Park, Toronto.
(Click to view video)

Prototype Scenario #2 of Metaphorical and Proximal Spatial Experience
(Double click to view animation)

Prototype Scenario #3 of Metaphorical and Proximal Spatial Experience
(Double click to view animation)

Alter Audio Development Report, Banff, 2006

Alter Audio Mobile and Locative Sound Experiences- conference proceedings

Note: The Alter Audio project is referenced in Sonic Interaction Design. 2013.  Eds Karmen Franinovic and Stefania Serafin. MIT press. 

MDCN Project 2: Scramble Game (Real Life, Co-Located Scrabble)

We developed this locative game, in which players in immediate proximity to each other or in distant cities could interact to solve a word puzzle, by positioning themselves in space to progress through levels of gameplay.  Engineer David Gautier created an application which runs on multiple phones and displays the users’ location within a delimited physical space (eg a city park) as a dot on the screen.  As the user moves, their dot moves on the screen. Two separate physical spaces were overlaid so that three players in one city could all see each other interact in the virtual space of the screen.  Users in Montreal and Toronto played this scrabble-type game together simultaneously, each player moving their body corresponding to a letter on their cellphone screen, until all letters lined up on the screen to display a word; in our case, the word was MDCN.  Subsequent versions leveled up difficulty, for example requiring co-located teams to create words in 60 seconds.

Research Team

Creative Leads: Paula Gardner and Geoffrey Shea
MDCN PIs: Sara Diamond and Michael Longford
Engineers: Tom Donaldson, David Gauthier
Research coordinator: Patricio Davila
Research Assistants: Ken Leung, Jenny Ziemianin, and Peter Todd

A black background with the letters MDCN and a white image with green lines surrounding the letters MDCN

Writing

Original Scramble Brief can be viewed here

Paper authored by Geoffrey Shea on Scramble: Shea, Geoffrey. (2008). Art, design, education and research in pursuit of interactive experiences.  Proceedings of the Conference on Designing Interactive Systems, Cape Town, South Africa, February 25-27, 2008, 342-349. 10.1145/1394445.1394482.

MDCN Project 3: Phone Noir Locative Audio Experience

Phone Noir is a mobile poetry experience presented at the Words Aloud! Spoken Word Festival, Durham, ON, November, 2006. Users are transported to a Casablanca-inspired railway environment, peppered with random noir-like phrases that are isolated or overlap depending on their movement through a determined space. An indoor iteration uses Bluetooth beacons while the outdoor version uses one’s GPS coordinates. The user’s position between two Bluetooth beacons determined which of the two voices users could hear speaking the poetic narrative.   

Research Team

Creators: Paula Gardner and Geoffrey Shea
Written and Performed: Paula Gardner and Geoffrey Shea
Additional Sound: John Pavicic
Engineered: Jagmit Singh (Bluetooth) and Ken Leung (GPS).