Hewlett Packard Bristol

Louise and myself went for a meeting with HP in Bristol today.

While working under the banner of Mobile Bristol; HP, the University of West of England and various other arts organisations were able to experiment with locative media, to create projects such as Active Print, Schminky and Queen Square Riots.

Both Louise and myself have been looking at MB's work closely for quite a while, but we have never had the opportunity to meet with them. It was a great relief to talk about locative media, and Mediascapes with other like minded enthusiasts, especially since the and Cyfarthfa Street Crew have banned all mention of the term!

Anyway, after dropping Liz off at the airport Lou drove like a women possessed across Bristol to get us to our meeting on time. Once inside the HP building, with name tags adorned, we were met by Phil Stenton who is manager of the Technology & Lifestyle Integration Department at HP laboratories, and a really nice bloke to boot.

We explained our 'Turning Alien Places into Informed Spaces' project to Phil and Tom Melamed, another researcher at HP, and they gave us loads of advice and help about how we could present the work using the Mobile Bristol Toolkit 1.7. We also talked about the use of ambient sounds within a tour so visitors can fully engage with an area, which to be honest was an area we hadn't even thought about!

Tom was also a great help to us technically, explaining the various aspects of the iPaq and Mobile Bristol toolkit that we didn't understand. I really felt that both Phil and Tom are as passionate about LM as Lou and myself are, which is really refreshing.

As VersionTwoPointZero plan to continue in this field after this project has finished we asked Phil and Tom what route they thought would be most beneficial for us to take. They both agreed that a Masters based around the area of locative media would give us time to experiment at a safe distance whilst the industry advances to a point were it is commercially viable.

Previous projects that HP have been involved in were also chatted about thus providing us with increased inspiration and also a more solid understanding of the current work that is being carried out in 'our' field. One such project is History Unwired which is a tour which uses mobile phones to guide visitors around the streets and canals of Venice.

Finally, Louise and myself might be able to borrow a new iPaq from Phil as the one we are currently borrowing from Stu doesn't have GPS, Wi-Fi or a large enough memory to cope with the tour. Also we might have the opportunity to lend some infared beacons that work with the iPaq's and are the best way to replicate the awesome feeling of location based content delivery without having to be on location.

Louise and myself would like to thank Phil and Tom for taking time to meet with us. It is greatly appreciated.

Steve
woolofsky@versiontwopointzero.com