 Kia ora, bonjour à tous. Hi everyone, it's a pleasure to be here. So I come from France, Europe, then 14 years in North America, Canada, and now I moved in permanently to Wellington just a couple of months ago. So I'm coming from mostly software engineering background, but I'm very interested in the topics of digital activism, open source and open data. So in general, how we can use technology to improve things, but not necessarily like in the Californian capitalist mindset, but more social community mindset. And I think personally, since I was a kid, I've always been fascinated with the idea of fusing the city as a playground for public expression. You know, like the Greeks used to do graffitis already, and I find it's a place for everyone, and we should try to use it as such. And this talk is going to be focused on the kind of weird topic of locative media. So how many people have heard about locative media here, or locative art? Maybe one, two, oh, yeah, more than I expected. So I think one of the examples that probably everyone knows is Pokemon Go. So it's a game that people play on the phone that uses the city grid, so the physical map of the city as the playground. And people go to specific places that are marked on the map on their mobile phone to hunt Pokemons. And what happens when the game was first released, you'd have like mobs of people forming organically at street corners because people were chasing Pikachu, for instance. And Pokemon Go is what we call an ARG, so alternate reality game, or augmented reality game, where the game is overlaid on top of what you see. But Pokemon Go is not the first iteration. The first iteration by the same company called Niantic was Ingress, which originally was working with Google Maps as a substrate to play the game. And the purpose of the game was that players had to go physically into places and claim territory in some kind of game where corporations and people were fighting for world domination, kind of conspiracy aspect to it. But besides these more well-known applications, there is a very interesting cross-disciplinary digital studio in UK called Blastery, so some of you might have known of it. And specifically that piece back in 2011, so a while ago, called A Machine to See With. And the description goes like this. Just listen to the voice on the phone. The voice tells you what to do. The voice says you're playing the lead in a movie, hide in the toilets, find the getaway car, stake out the bank, and take a deep breath. You're going in. So it's an immersive experience that happens in the city. And you start by calling a phone number, and the voice on the phone number tells you what to do, to go to a place and then calls you back. So it's very interesting because the space in which the experience takes place is the space we know, like the city. But the substrate, the medium on which it operates, is animated through a voice-automated system on your phone. So in a way to experience the project, you need to have the synergy between the technology and the location. Actually, the very first time I heard about Locative Art was when I was on my plane, on the plane to Denmark to do the first iteration of the project. And I had this book by William Gibson in my luggage called Spook Country. I hadn't heard about it before, I know Gibson, of course, because he's bigger in technology. And in that book, there was a very complete description of Locative Art. Specifically, one of the characters had created AR, VR renditions of fictional and past events that you could only experience by going to the place and hooking up specific hardware. And I don't remember when that was published, but it was even before. And so it was like an inspiration for the project. It's always good to turn to Wikipedia for normative definitions. So Locative Media, according to Wikipedia, concentrates on social interaction with a place and with technology so that notion of place, technology and community is very important. But for me, I think the notion of having a digital overlay that is anchored in a physical space is more visual and I think it characterizes my approach to Locative Media. And I really see it as a new digital medium that uses the place as an integral part of the experience. So instead of creating a digital experience that lives on the internet, it's accessible from everywhere. Here you take the place as the starting point or one of the core elements of how you create and design that experience. So one of the questions that I was asking myself around that notion of Locative Media is what happens when you tie information to the physical space as opposed to the internet. And you create a de facto information island that is disconnected from the network. That creates a network of its own. And some of these questions led to the first iteration of that project. So the platform, the technological platform called Invisible Islands. So the first iteration was made in Denmark in the city of Oris, which is like the second biggest city there and that was back in 2014. So quite a while ago. And the core idea was to create local information islands disconnected from the internet where users could share and access content through their mobile phone. Now something that was also very important to me was the notion of privacy. At the time there was the WikiLeaks, Edward Snowden, and we could see that there was government mass surveillance. And what I found interesting in that notion of offline networks, so disconnected information islands, is that if you want to do surveillance, you actually have to go there. You have to physically go to that place and connect to the network and try to harvest the data. So I saw that as an opportunity to create sharing and exchange safe havens. And that was also one of the big motivations in doing the project. So to power these islands I wanted to install a dozen of them so you cannot really, it's outdoors so you need to have chip devices that are low-powered so that you can use batteries. And you want to deploy them guerrilla style in different locations in the city so you don't necessarily have access to plugs either. And also because it's disconnected from the internet you don't have Google, you don't have URLs or domain names. So the way to access the content I thought to use QR codes printed on stickers. And so you would scan the QR code using your mobile phone. It would take you to a specific address within the offline network and you would access content like that. So basically there's no search engine. The only way to access content is to look around and try to find these QR codes. So it's a very interesting way to embed layers of information hidden into the space that you see around you. So of course you need to give concrete examples so people can have a better idea of what it is. So imagine graphites, you know graphites are eminently ephemeral, they're washed out, painted over, removed. What if you can take a photo of a graffiti and sterilize it into a QR code and then you take your phone, scan the QR code and you see it as it was before. So that notion of creating layers of digital archive that are saved in-situ is exactly where you are. I thought also Banksy is exhibited in galleries and sells for millions but I find it would be great to have the same contextual information that you have when you go to an exhibition. So what if you have a QR code next to a piece of street art that tells you more about the author and maybe the intent or the story of the piece. But more importantly I found there were many opportunities to create links between places in the city by using QR codes as a way-finding element that will take you from, you know, something that would be on the mainstream where tourists go like a museum and maybe give you cues to go off the beaten path and discover places that are more community focused where non-tourists and people living here interact with each other. Like here on the picture, on the left, that's like center, old city of ours with museums and touristy area. On the right, that's Gotzbanen, which is a little bit off-centered and is a very lively community of makers, creators and very local. So how do you create links between these places and encourage people to cross-pollinate? So to do that, of course, you need to create hardware. So I played a little bit with a 3D printer with a lot of success, as you can see here. After a few iterations, I managed to do something that didn't look very good, but at least it was functional. So the devices, they need to have a relatively good range, Wi-Fi range, so you have the big dongle here. They need to be tropicalized. That means they need to be resistant to some extent to moisture and rain. The only problem I found is that solar panels didn't really work well and the batteries did not have enough capacity to last more than four or five hours. So I really need to plug the device for them to work. So that was like a limitation in that iteration of the project. And then we proceeded to deploy the islands in different places, like in Gotzbanen here and try to see how people would use it. And to do that, we created a workshop. You can see printed QR codes. Here you have QR codes with pictures embedded. So we tried to play with the medium of QR codes as something that would be more than just, like, you know, this noisy pattern. And so people started to think about potential applications. And you see Rasmus in the middle with a pen and the shirt. And Rasmus is a scout. So during the weekends, he animates scout camps. And he had this idea of creating a game not unlike Ingress, where, you know, it's a story of corporations and citizens, like same theme, but that would take place in a forest and the QR codes would be hidden in trees. And he was actually carrying the islands on his backpack. So he took the same idea of, like, a game, wayfinding using the location in an unusual way and created a new whole application for it. And I found that super interesting and showed that definitely, like, there was something there and it could be used as a medium for creating experiences. That takes me to the second iteration of the project called Les Invisibles, which is, like, the French translation of Invisible Islands, this time in Montreal a year after in 2015. So that iteration of the project was made in collaboration with the National Film Board and the Cartier des Spectacles, which is where you have, like, all the museums, all the venues, Le Festival du Jazz, also, which is very well known. And Daniel is, like, the best person for the project, really, he's passionate about walking and exploring cities. He talks a lot about time and space and how we experience it. He has a very poetic touching perspective on things. And also he's, like, one of the pioneers of, you know, cross-media digital. He actually did CD-ROMs, you know, in the mid-90s. And so it was a great opportunity and a very good fit for the project. So at the time I was starting to think that QR codes were probably not the best. They felt a little bit awkward to interact with. And I was looking for alternatives in terms of how do you advertise the content, how do you make the content discoverable. And if you've been to Montreal, you know, that it's always in construction. Like, the symbol of Montreal should be a working cone, you know? And so if you look on the floor, you'll see, on the ground, you'll see, like, the markings that construction workers do to indicate gas pipes and work. So there is already, like, that kind of natural overlaying of information that you find in the city. I also found that, like, the more official institutions were using, you know, stickers on the floor to do wavefinding and orient people on the streets. And there's also, like, the more, you know, random things like a construction person, like leaving some duct tape and a number. I don't really know what it's for, but it's still part of these layers of information that you find naturally in the city. So our thinking was, like, can we try to use some of these communication mechanisms to embed our own layer of communication that would be invisible if you don't know what you're looking for? So we tried to have something that's almost camouflage, a layer of information that is there but not really. And so what we thought we were doing is to spray paint markings on the floor and create sites of interest, so denoted by these kind of wavy lines and the cryptic symbol. And instead of using QR codes, we would be using numbers, like, dates that would relate to events in the past and the present and in the future as well. And you'd have that website, so a progressive web application that works offline as well, where you can enter the number and for each number that you enter, you unlock a fragment of content. So the way it works in practice is you imagine the Cartier des spectacles, which is, you know, it's quite big and you're out of the metro station, which is a Saint-Laurent station, which is central. You come out and you see that panel that tells you to take your mobile phone, connect to the Wi-Fi network, les îles invisibles, open your browser, so normally you're redirected to that. And then you follow the instructions. What you would see on your phone is a map with where you are, like the triangle, the Saint-Laurent station. And a novelie. And so what you see here is the context, the spatial context in which the story takes place. And the story is about the Cartier des spectacles now and how it was before and how it's going to be in the future after the rising of sea levels and then the creation of islands, physical islands in that location. Some of the sites will be submerged. Some of those will be submerged. And so if you start to look around from that panel, you'll see these small markings, these arrows. And if you follow them, then you end up in sight. So we actually created that alphabet of symbols that you see here and the waves would, of course, remind you of the rising sea levels, like one of the trope of the story. And looking around the sites, you'll find the numbers that you use to decode the fragments of the story. So I think we had maybe 16 sites and 72 fragments, so quite a lot of content. But you wouldn't necessarily need to read them in order or read them all. And what we wanted to do, also coming back to one of the sites I had before, we wanted to connect places and take you to places that you wouldn't necessarily know. So maybe like you've been... The Cartier de Spectac is very popular. I mean like everyone living in Montreal spends time there. But there are some parts of it where people don't necessarily go. And so part of the design of the experience was to try to take people outside of the beaten path as well as on the regular path as well. And so as you visit the sites, then you unlock content and each time you get a letter of an alphabet. So I forgot to mention that at the beginning of the experience you have that letter that you cannot read. The only thing you can read is the first sentence, which is Cher Cher, which means dear, dear in English. So it's kind of cryptic, but you want to know more. And so as you read, you collect the fragments of the story, you understand more about the context and also you have more characters to decipher that letter at some point you'll be able to read it. So that acted also as a game element to encourage exploring and reading more about the story and going to more sites. So what I found super interesting is that it was not that difficult to have permits to spray paint on the ground. And by the way, that's a special type of paint that goes away after a month, so that was fine. But the one thing that I was not allowed to do in the project was to open up the islands for public expression. So that means the content was read-only and people were not able to create their own codes. I had hoped that people would add codes to the site and expand the story, but actually people at the city were worried about the lack of moderation. And so they just said, if we cannot moderate, then we don't want people to be able to share content. So I found that very interesting how the expression public space can be restricted for reasons like that. So the project was super interesting and I think for me it definitely showed me that Locative Media has a lot of potential and there are still many, many opportunities to explore. Although that was like five years ago, there's still a lot going on. Something that has definitely changed is the rise in mobile technologies. They're catching up. You have AR, augmented reality, machine learning, artificial intelligence for shape or condition. NFC, which is near field communication. So if I go close to a place, the contents can update. And also I had friends working on Wi-Fi triangulations so you can have sub-meter precision using Wi-Fi, which wasn't really possible just a few years ago. And thinking about Wellington specifically, when space is scarce, when you have a lack of exhibition spaces, then Locative Media offers you the option of using the street, basically any space, as an exhibition space. So it has some very interesting property at a relatively low cost. And something that I also find interesting is the ability to experience art 24-7. As a teenager, I loved hanging out in the city after midnight, but of course everything is closed so you don't necessarily have a lot to do. What if you have like in front of museums and galleries, offline networks where you can connect and access some content. I think that idea is quite interesting. So, yeah, discussions are still definitely going on in the field. There's progress being made. There's an article published very recently in November in Forbes interviewing different people working AR and VR. And some of the quotes resonated with me. One of them is at the current early stage of these new art forms, that's AR, VR. Locations are absolutely critical to create the new audiences we need. So I find it interesting that, you know, like creating new audiences using location and that kind of technology. Another quote is, it's a good thing that not everything can be consumed at home by yourself, but that you also force an intrigue to go and experience things in other places. And I think that's also interesting to take that in the context of the epidemic of loneliness. I don't know if it's the case in New Zealand, but in the States and in Canada, it's certainly like a major health issue. And it's an interesting opportunity to use technology as a way, and mobile phones, as a way to take people out of the screen and back in the physical space and encourage face-to-face meetings and interactions. So there's a lot of potential there. And definitely, you know, Apple saw that potential. So they're actually... They created that application called ART Walkthrough here in Manhattan, where they commissioned artists, like mostly like big artists, to create ARPs. So they don't have to ask the permission of the city. You just need your iPhone and the application and then just access a window into that overlay. And so you have many pieces installed virtually throughout the city. It's a very interesting experience because it's large-scale, like really good artists, really good content, and also it showcases the advances in technology. Something that's very dear to me is interactive audio walks. So, of course, you have AR where it's very visual, but when you walk, you don't necessarily want to be looking at your phone all the time, you want to be looking around. So if you have a headset, you can listen and I feel like the problem with audio guides is very often it's not interactive enough, but if you leverage near-field communication, Wi-Fi triangulation, you can really make something more interactive. And then you have tools to create these links, both from the inside of the building to the outside and also across buildings in the city and creates like a mesh of virtual links. There's also a recent article that I found quite interesting by Dr. Steven Conway from the Smart Cities Research Institute in Swinburne, Australia, published in November as well, called From Monologue to Dialogue Towards Playable Cities. And I think his point is that games and applications like Pokemon Go, they don't really care about the city, they're not designed for the city. If you remember, like one of the definitions of locative content and locative media is that it needs to be designed for the location, it needs to be location-specific. But Pokemon Go is not location-specific, it just uses the grid of the city as a playground but doesn't really care what it is. And that creates a monologue where it's just a one-way communication. But if you create a dialogue, it means that the AR-VR content is designed for the place specifically. And as Dr. Steven Conway said, it opens up spaces previously close to us and hopefully encourage new ways of perceiving, feeling and expressing ourselves. And that really resonates to me with the core goals of locative media. So again, like locative media, it has a lot of potential. It's still a field that's pretty active and if you want to talk about it, that's my email and my Twitter handle. I'm going to be more active now. Thank you very much.