Proboscis is continuing to develop a series of Social Tapestries experiments:
Architecture Week 2005
Proboscis is collaborating with Arts Council England to launch the new version of Urban Tapestries in June 2005 with a series of commissioned architectural 'tours' through London. The Ordnance Survey has provided 100 square kilometres of geographic information covering the whole of Central London, and we will be experimenting with both traditional drawn maps and satellite photographs overlaid with the pockets and threads created by the participants. This 'trial' will mark our largest so far, with members of the public invited to register for an account and to be able to author their own threads as well as view ones created by others through the new web interface. During Architecture Week itself, we also hope to run a small trial with a group of people with physical impairments mapping access issues and barriers in the city.
Feral Robots
A Visiting Fellowship with Proboscis by Natalie Jeremijenko ('Robotic Feral Public Authoring') is continuing apace. The experiment will attempt to bridge Urban Tapestries' spatial annotation abilities with Natalie's re-configurations of toy robots for social activist uses such as pollution sensing.The Fellowship is being funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).
STAMPS
Our collaboration with EPFL (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology) in Lausanne, with whom we will be using UT to study semantic models for spatialised communications among groups, is also continuing to develop. EPFL intend to develop a smart algorithm for improving the ability of systems like UT to alert users to geo-annotations relevant to their context and situation. We are anticipating running several small trials over the next year in partnership with EPFL.
Eyes on the Street
Proboscis is developing a project with the Community Development Foundation and Citizens Online to develop issues of neighbourliness in social housing and community safety, looking at the potential of public authoring technologies like Urban Tapestries to create new modes of local knowledge creation and exchange, and its implications for community development.
Neighbourhood Games
John Paul Bichard is developing a research scenario and prototype for social gaming based around the concepts and capabilities of public authoring.
RoadMarker
Nick West is developing a research scenario and prototype for a car-based audio annotation system.