Paper at the Transforming Museums conference, Roskilde May 2012

1. Trust no-one!
A conspiracy play in the King’s
Kolding
“Mixed reality, ubiquitous computing and
augmented places as format for
communicating culture”
The Transformative Museum, RUC 23.-25.5. 2012
Kjetil Sandvik, associate professor, Department of Media,
Cognition and Communication, University of Copenhagen

2. Project scope
• Mobile phones (smart phones) used for
communicating culture
• Fiction used for communicating history
• Experiments with Augmented Reality (at low
costs)
• Creating an unorthodox city walk:
– instead of an exhibition about renaissance
Kolding, we let the renaissance pop up in the city
space
• The audience as participants and co-creators

3. Format not just for
the design process,
but for ’the exhi-
bitions’ itself

4. Project scope
• Mixed media:
– mobile phone as ’swizz army knife’
– mash-up of variety of services: low-cost and easy to
adjust (Layar, Google Maps, Youtube and other file-
sharing services)
• Ubiquitous computing:
– not so much embedded in the fabric of physical
location
– but accessible everywhere by ways of…
• Mobile and location sensitive media:
• Over-layering locations with digital information:
• Augmentation!

6. Augmentation
• an informational, aesthetical and/or
emotional enhancement of our sense and
experience of place by use of various framing
strategies (e.g. Ian Rankin’s Edinburgh) and
media technologies (e.g. a guided Rebus Tour).

7. Augmentation of places
• Construction of a kind of mixed reality
• the place has a status both as an actual
location in the physical world and as a
storyspace
• blend of fact and fiction
• blend of physical and mediated space
• blend of presentation and (user)
performance
• ‘charged spaces’ (Valtysson)
7

8. 8

9. Split reality vs Mixed reality
• Split reality: switching between mediated space
(e.g. inside the mobile phone) and physical space
• Mixed reality: blending between mediated and
physical space (e.g. looking at physical space
through an ‘augumented reality browser’ on the
mobile phone)
• Mixed reality implies a certain way of telling
stories connecting the actual and the fictional
space/the physical space and the mediated space
• (this is where Hikuin’s Vendetta goes wrong – and we try to
make things right)
9

11. 11

12. Kolding as augmented storyspace
• Creating a dramatic meta-story connecting different location
specific narrative tableaus containing various actual historical
characters and events
– (e.g. the co-operation between the public executioner and the
pharmacist selling human fat and pulverized sculls for medical use)
• within the same fiction frame providing connections between the
narrative tableaus
– (the castle is on fire (which is an actual event), a messenger is found
murdered, a conspiracy against the King may be afoot).
• The tale is taking place in the city space and interfaces with specific
locations with historical significance
– (e.g. the square where executions took place, the building housing the
pharmacy)
• Thus: a mediated version of renaissance Kolding is mapped onto the
physical – and present-day – version of the city.

15. Kolding as augmented storyspace
• Creating a dramatic meta-story connecting different location
specific narrative tableaus containing various actual historical
characters and events
– (e.g. the co-operation between the public executioner and the
pharmacist selling human fat and crushed sculls for medical use)
• within the same fiction frame providing connections between the
narrative tableaus
– (the castle is on fire (which is an actual event), a messenger is found
murdered, a conspiracy against the King may be afoot).
• The tale is taking place in the city space and interfaces with specific
locations with historical significance
– (e.g. the square where executions took place, the building housing the
pharmacy)
• Thus: a mediated version of renaissance Kolding is mapped onto the
physical – and present-day – version of the city.

16. Physical space as media
• The physical space is to some degree
functioning as media communicating specific
types of information, specific types of stories.
• the city quarters with its streets, alleys, buildings,
ornamentations such as statues, gargoyles and so on
function as a narrative architecture like a
theme/themed park like Disneyland including buildings
and landscapes known from the catalog of Disney
fairytales
• Several parts of the city of Kolding used as
location for the “Trust No-one!” project have
these qualities of being media in themselves,
as carriers of the story of Kolding. 16

18. Physical space as media
• With the use of mobile phones equipped with
navigation tools and augmented reality
browsers this information residing in the very
architecture and infrastructure of the city may
be pulled forth and made visible, accessible
and interactive from the perspective of
communicating history and cultural heritage.
18

25. 25

26. Storyspace
Meta-story Narrative tableaus

27. Summing up
• Augmentation makes us see things in new
ways:
• Buildings are not just buildings, streets are not
just streets – the carry stories, they carry
cultural meaning
• This meaning may be experienced through an
interplay between the physical locations of
the city and the ubiquitous and locative
information layers provided by mobile media.

28. Project participants
• Kolding Libraries
• Kolding City Archive
• VIFIN – knowledge center for integration
(Vejle)
• Dept. of Media, Cognition and
Communication,, University of Copenhhagen
• Knowledge center for Children and Youth
Culture, VIA University College

29. Visit the project on Facebook
• https://www.facebook.com//Stolpaaingen#!/S
tolpaaingen
• Online, open-accessed development site