Some Thoughts on Pervasive Practice
That’s not to gloss over the many differences between the two practices; and especially a project like The Frome Maidens which is built on music and poetry and is avowedly ‘non-linear’ (begging a question about why something as physically linear as a river was its inspiration!). What ties my own practice and pervasive practice together is their reliance on conventions and, though their languages are quite different, the similarity is in knowing that the success of a production lies in understanding these conventions/languages and making the appropriate ‘production decisions’ based on knowledge of them. In pervasive practice, it’s clear that the conventions, the language, are still developing and evolving and being learnt; even for experienced practitioners like Ralph. The MediaScape experiments that Phill and I carried out early-on were grappling with quite fundamental issues: it wasn’t immediately obvious what relationship music and poetry should have to the landscape, or how to bring the two elements together in physical space. By way of comparison, I don’t think either of us would have struggled nearly so hard to compile words and music along a time-line. It’s this new spatial dimension that poses the biggest challenge; but it’s a nice problem to have and very exciting – in the same way film must have been for its early pioneers.
In terms of what works and what doesn’t, I think that’s something everyone involved is still learning: but there are a few (tentative) conclusions that I can draw from my experience of The Frome Maidens. First, it is hard to overestimate just how important the physical landscape becomes in locative media. It’s useful to think of the landscape as the ‘interface’ and compare it with the computer screen. What’s missing from the locative interface is the menus and windows and other graphics that allow users to navigate the HCI, and if the Scape isn’t very carefully tied to features of the landscape, the experience ceases to be truly interactive because there’s no sense of being in control. The Scape needs to be coherent and consistent and ‘testable’ (in the sense that clicking on a given icon produces particular results). And so it becomes hugely important to map and understand the features of a landscape and the way in which people are likely to navigate their way through it. There’s a kind of primal ‘cognitive geography’ involved in understanding how people treat landscapes: how they locate themselves, what reference points they use, what paths they choose to navigate; as well as the emotional responses they may have to that landscape. And this cognitive, as well as physical, landscape needs to be deeply understood before even beginning to layer a virtual landscape on top of it. Then the task appears to me to be one of enhancing the physical/cognitive landscape with a virtual layer; either by embellishing on it (adding information, media) or by juxtaposing (critiquing even) the physical environment. Of course it’s possible to produce Scapes that are not specific to a particular location; in which case, it is necessary to mark-out the playing territory in some way, or the Scape has to rely on the adeptness of players at generating their own mental (‘mind’s eye’) maps. But it seems to me that the most creative opportunities for pervasive media lie in building relationships with real, physical landscapes.
Either way, it appears (from our own experience of the Frome Maidens and feedback from our testers) that users instinctively want to build these ‘mental maps’ of the Scape. In fact, when we asked testers to draw these for us, it was quite astonishing to see how detailed and sophisticated these were. These maps seem to be part of an urge to be in control; to know what’s what and what’s where. That being the case, there are a number of design considerations that can aid this mental mapping process. Again, tying the Scape to the landscape is probably the most important. But it’s also hugely helpful if areas are distinctive and differentiated, allowing users to ‘test’ the Scape for consistency and make them feel in control of the interactive experience. It was helpful, for example, to sometimes give music areas a hard edge rather than blend them into others, so that users could pace back and forward to test the edge of an area. Contrasting areas of high and low intensity also helped to differentiate areas. And the way in which the content was distributed also mattered: creating areas with distinctly different moods –happy, angry, peaceful, threatening, scary etc. Unfortunately, designing these aspects of consistency and ‘testability’ is currently hampered by the vagaries of GPS technology (which often leads to ‘shifting’ of the Scape) and so some leeway needs to be built-in to account for this: e.g., making areas larger than absolutely necessary to account for them sometimes drifting.
There are some other design considerations that the Frome Maidens experience has highlighted for me. First, in such an immersive experience, the cardinal sin is to ‘break the spell’ by doing anything that interferes with the ‘suspension of disbelief’. In this Scape, where music and poetry are so central, an area of silence was enough to do this; with players losing engagement or even putting the silence down to technical failure.
Another important factor was the scale and density of the experience. Slowly, we developed rules of thumb about how large a sound area needed to be in relation to the length of an audio clip, and how densely packed these areas should be. Too much and the user is overwhelmed; too little and the experience becomes boring or repetitive. It’s one of the hardest things to judge; not least because users walk at different paces and in different ways.
Pervasive media also brings about a different relationship with the audience. Because users are placed in control of the experience, producing endless permutations, the authors have to predict and control (to whatever extent they can) all these eventualities. How differently might users respond to ‘this’? What happens if the user wanders beyond the boundaries of the experience? In what ways might you provide signposting to lead users towards valuable experiences? (In the case of the Frome Maidens, how do you persuade users to wander off physical footpaths in search of other, ‘non-linear’ experiences?) Can we think about different ‘types’ of users? And so on.There’s a notion that new media forms lead to a loss of authorship but in practice, the authors are compelled to become more controlling, more defining, more overbearing, in order to compensate for the unpredictability of user behaviour. Testing becomes an essential part of this process, and always will be, but especially so because conventions have yet to be established.
Not only are there many variables to be contended with in terms of user behaviour but, particularly with the Frome Maidens project, so many different ways in which the music/poetry content could be combined and mapped onto the landscape – and this has been truly mind-boggling at times. Freed from any narrative logic, the possible combinations, juxtapositions and mixes of content are almost endless. In the end, the process of narrowing down the options becomes more personal and a product of individual artistic preferences. It’s interesting, for example, that Ralph and Phill’s different versions of the MScape for Riverside Park reflected their backgrounds. Phill’s version became much more concerned with music (producing some really interesting, but ‘abstract’, musical experiences) while Ralph’s version was much more concerned with producing meaning from the interplay of words and music. But both were rich and testers responded positively to both of these very individual interpretations.
I’ve said that the author is alive and well in pervasive practice, but the emphasis is (more than in film) on collaboration. Film is, I think, also collaborative but retains a clear ‘the buck stops here’ hierarchy. Used to playing a role that sits quite high in that hierarchy, I wasn’t sure how comfortable I’d feel playing the role of a minion! But, in reality, and despite my inexperience, the ‘team’ valued my input and gave me an extraordinary degree of freedom to go where I wanted with it –which was great! I think in this kind of project, collaboration becomes a necessity because each member has distinctly different skills to bring to it; all of them necessary to its success. There’s also the acknowledgment that no one person can possibly have all the answers: it’s an experiment that explores new territory and so an openness of mind is required.
Finally, the Frome Maidens project throws up a number of specific issues that provide food for further thought. First, is the observation that it materialises music and words, giving them physical shape. As Ralph put it, ‘It means you can point over “there” at “that” piece of music’. And that’s a very different way to think about music. I wonder if this will lead to the development of different ways of composing which can account for this –and what shapes the music will take. A ‘long piece of music’ may come to mean something very different! In particular, I think Phill’s propensity to shape music into complex, abstract, geometric areas is an interesting avenue to follow (I suggest building music Scapes modelled on ‘kaleidoscopic’, ‘spiral’ or other patterns from nature –cell structures etc). More mundanely, I like the idea of creating a virtual orchestra through which the user can wander, picking-up the sounds of individual instruments or sections.
Very finally, the Frome Maiden’s project has contributed two very fresh considerations for pervasive practice: the joint prospects of ‘virtual trespass’ and ‘virtual graffiti’. This came about when Sir Richard Dyson turned-down a polite request to host one of the Scapes on his land, at the source of the River Frome. Since a public footpath runs through it, we were able to walk there and did build a Scape. But does building a Scape on private land and against the wishes of the owner constitute either trespass or ‘incitement to trespass’ or breach any law? I don’t know that there’s a real legal issue in this, but it’s an interesting question, conceptually. So too is the act of ‘virtual graffiti’ that emerged from our response to Dyson. I suggested using the Scape to write a word of abuse across his land. In the end, we opted for ‘HYLAS’ –in keeping with the ‘narrative’. But what status should we give these non-material acts of defiance and transgression? Could it ever, conceivably, be policed? And is there scope in this for a radical, critical, subversive approach to pervasive media? 
The project has been a valuable and stimulating experience for me and I’m sure the thoughts will keep-on coming –but that’s enough for now. My thanks to Phill, Ralph and Marc for their generosity in letting me in on the project. I hope we get a chance to collaborate again. Best of luck with your future projects! 
