Collaborative Mobs

One of the highlights of Futuresonic last month was the one I had with the CoMob folks. I was that keen to get on this one that I went to the earliest iteration around lunchtime, hence why there were only three of us in ‘The Mob’. CoMob, presented by research project leaders Jen Southern and Chris Speed, premiered at Futuresonic and is designed for collaborative GPS mapping. Each member of the mob becomes a node on the map, and so by collaborating with the other folks on the server, can surround an object/site/sight or draw shapes on the map. It all depends on what you want to map.

iPhone borrowed (thanks to Toby), app installed, server configured, the three of us left the building and started walking and talking about what we wanted to map. The premiere of this digital art piece was part of the Environment 2.0 strand of Futuresonic, and so we started talking pollution. Noise, air – these were things that were too untangible to map without additional equipment. Visual? In a previous talk someone had hit upon something that reminded me of the Sao Paulo clamp down on visual pollution – this struck a chord with all three of us. So we started surrounding objects that we classed as visual pollution – rotating advertising, neon signs etc.

It’s important to note at this point that the app does not currently feature visual feedback on your movements – these were being recorded back at the conference. Thus, we could only imagine how our movements could be later interpreted (this in itself became an important discussion back at the projection table).

This first stage of mapping really could have been done with a map and pencil, but was nevertheless a good ice breaker between the three of us, and the subject a good one to start from. We naturally started talking about brands, and after ’stalking’ some heavily branded people realised that a better use of our collaborative mobile mapping mob would be to track the movement of things. The nodes could then be joined up and represent the coverage a portable visual identity has in the real world. Right over the road from the Contact Theatre was probably the most ubiquitous and recognisable brands in the world – McDonalds. So we started following people with branded take-away food, following them until they left public space. The result visually proved that the golden arches cover more ground than the logo on the side of the building visible at street level (see image). Okay – no big surprise there. But with a few more people and more time over a bigger area, the results could be shocking and, perhaps more importantly for CoMob as an app that can work independently from the complicated server setup required currently, easy for anyone to do. If something like this is easier to do, the more people will do it. The more people do it – the more people that present it, and the more people will become aware, through a visual medium, of the effects of actions and objects in the physical world.

If nothing else, CoMob could be a great tool for giving more people a bird’s eye view of their surroundings, thereby increasing social conscience in public spaces.

(CC image by aeioux)