Mapping and city navigation is a big topic at the moment, especially with all the iphone apps going about. Here are a few thoughts I’ve had around the topic:

Street view offers a whole new dimension for potential visitors to a city, that I don’t feel has been fully taken advantage of as yet. With extra elements added in to the current format it could be great way to view the city and plan where you want to go. ‘Signposts’ could be added to direct users to local attractions, potentially targeted to the user’s interests. Comments and reviews could also be tagged to places as you ‘travel’ past, in a similar way to the how augmented reality city apps work on iphone. Tours could also be done, so you could be guided around the best places in that neighbourhood whilst getting much more of a real vibe of what the place looks like before you go. Or maybe I do far too much research in to cities before I visit!

Although I do find all the augmented reality city apps very exciting, I do feel that it may interrupt the actual feel of the city to a degree. Following from a post by Russell Davies along the same lines, I started to think of how you could be guided around the city without it disturbing your experience. One idea I had for an actual navigation tool would be a vibration on your phone that directed you. So you could set up your phone to direct you to your destination, and each time you needed to turn it would vibrate a certain way. To turn left it might be a solid “buzz — buzz — buzz — buzz” and to turn left “b — buzz — b — buzz — b — buzz”.

Information overload in cities as been mentioned a lot as well. Initially this idea may appear to contradict that thought, but it would eliminate the information for half of the day, when essentially it isn’t necessary. Directions to nightlife venues could be advertised in street lights - essentially creating shadows to form the lettering. This could also be used for public notices that are more necessary at night such as for warnings about using crime or maybe even taxi ranks.

Another thought is for interactive sign posts, obviously this is isn’t really necessary for the smartphone group, but as the majority of people don’t use them at the moment it may still have some relevance. Signs could have digital displays that would change according to what events are on at that time. But also, if someone was looking for a particular event, they could text the sign post and it would turn to point in the direction. Obviously this could essentially done by a touch-screen computer, but I thought the signs might be something a bit nicer than a screen people have to crowd around, as there could be multiple sign-arms and they seem a bit more human.

The idea is to replicate or create a landscape in an ‘empty’ room.  By projecting strong beams of sound, vibrations and possibly light down from the ceiling people could move around to room and feel like they’ve travelled around the scene. So if it was an area in the Lake District, for instance, at parts of high altitude vibrations with a very high frequency could be pumped in, with whistles and high pitches of sound, and sharp fresh light.  At lakes, the vibrations would be quite soft and almost muffled, with deep softly pulsing sound, and almost muggy light.

I went to see Anthony McCall’s installation at the Serpentine Gallery a couple of years ago, and the way he focused the light in to very tight areas is something I would like to replicate with the sound and vibrations, but through cylindrical columns projected from above, so they can be passed between easily to experience the different areas.

Potentially imagery could be projected down the cylinders, but I’m not sure whether this would add to the effect or dispel the senses evoked from the other mediums.