Presentation on Cultural and tourist strategies through digital devices, at the conference of the Regional Tourism Committee of Lodz, Poland, October 26th 2010
Commissioned by the Museum of Copenhagen, the WALL is a massive, movable interactive display that tells the history of the city and allows users to add their own photos and stories. The WALL is the newest communication project at the Museum of Copenhagen. It places the story of the city right in the town center. On a 12 meter long interactive multitouch screen you can fly away in a gigantic picture universe, and evoke the Copenhagen of the past and present. You can even tell your own story by uploading your private photos to the WALL. To foster discussion about the past, present and future of Denmark’s capital, the Museum of Copenhagen has commissioned the creation of a multi-touch video display that will move from neighborhood to neighborhood in the country’s largest city. A multimedia installation consisting of four multi-touch plasma screens with a total span of approximately 12 meters long by 2 meters tall, the WALL, as the massive display is called, “aims to provide a platform for the exchange of opinions and storytelling, whereby the users themselves participate in interpreting the history of Copenhagen,” the museum said. Through an interface comprising a mixture of material from the museum’s collections and contemporary photographs of the city, the WALL provides access to a voyage of discovery within the past, present and future of Copenhagen. By moving your hand along the timeline at the bottom of the cityscape screen, you are able to call forth and zoom in on changing historical images of the town. Up to eight users can set the town in motion from different perspectives at any given moment. With a single click on a person, tower or park, stories are called forth regarding the everyday life experienced by Copenhageners at different points in history, in connection with major events in the city, business life and cultural tendencies. The database encompassing the rich collection of pictures of Copenhagen also will steadily grow as the WALL invites its users to expand upon the portrayals of the life, history and identity of the town shown on the WALL by uploading personal memories, pictures, films, music or texts either in-situ at the WALL, or at the museum’s Web site. The WALL is the result of collaboration among the Museum of Copenhagen, New Zealand production company Gibson International , Danish graphic studio Spild af Tid , and ProShop Europe installation company. It was funded by the Copenhagen City Council, The Labour Market Holiday Fund and The Heritage Agency of Denmark, as well as by a number of private individuals, businesses and institutions. Due to the size and complexity of the project, the Museum of Copenhagen launched an EU tender with a view to attracting a more advanced collaborator than could have been found in Denmark. The tender was won by Gibson International, a multimedia production company that has developed a completely new and advanced user interface for the WALL. Spild af Tid’s multimedia artists created the eye-catching design. And together, Gibson International and ProShop Europe created a multi-user/multi-touch screen with a precise and reliable surface, ensuring that the WALL will work effectively for up to eight users concurrently. During the next four years, the WALL will exhibit on various squares throughout Copenhagen, where it will be erected as part of the museum’s communication strategy during the archaeological excavations that are to be carried out in connection with the construction of Copenhagen’s new City Ring Metro. The official opening of the Wall took place on April 24 on Kongens Nytorv, where it will be situated until June 2011, after which it will be moved to Rådhuspladsen, and then to Gammel Strand during the spring of 2012, and subsequently to other parts of the city.
CityWall is a large multi-touch display installed in a central location in Helsinki which acts as a collaborative and playful interface for the everchanging media landscape of the city. The new interface launched in October 2008 also allows working with 3D objects, which enables multiple content and multiple timelines. The content displayed on the CityWall is periodically organized into themes or events that are currently taking place in the city such as festivals, carnivals or sports events. The CityWall is designed to support the navigation of media, specifically annotated photos and videos which are continuously gathered in realtime from public sources such as Flickr and YouTube. To contribute content to the CityWall, you can send pictures and videos via MMS or email to [email_address] . Alternatively, tag your media on YouTube or Flickr with 'Helsinki' and they will pick up your media and display it on the CityWall. Using a series of intuitive gestures users can navigate and arrange media as if you were manipulating physical pictures. The touchscreen technology which enables this direct interaction has been specifically designed so that several people can interact directly with display at the same time; the maximum number of people who can interact is limited only by physical space. The current CityWall installation measures 2.6 meters wide but the technology would allow displays that are theoretically 16 meters wide. The CityWall is located in downtown Helsinki, Finland. It can be found in Lasipalatsi opposite Forum. The touchscreen technology and applications have been developed by the Ubiquitous Interaction group at the Helsinki Institute for Information Technology.