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Writing in Augmented Space

In this project, you will write and record an augmented-space audio walk, which you will make available via a web page. You will also perform a portion of the work for an off-site audience of your classmates.

Four Products: Script/Map, Audios, Web Page, Live Demo

For this assignment, you'll create four different products that build upon one another.

  1. a printed script (following the formatting guidelines below) with an accompanying map, which will be turned in on paper before the other products below.

  2. an audio recording of the script, saved as several .mp3 files, and digital files of any documents (visual or textual) that an audience would need to experience the walk., including a map

  3. a web page that archives the project--including links to the digital audio files, maps, images, etc.--making the project available online to both on-site and off-site audiences.

  4. an live demo of a portion of the walk for an off-site audience of your classmates.

Common Terms for Visual Elements in Augmented Space

We will use the following terms to describe the various aspects of your project:

Place: the general area that defines the parameters of your WAS Project as a whole

Location: a specific spot within the place where the audience will receive a particular part of the content. Locations are defined by what your audience is able to perceive at any one moment or continuous segment of time. If your audience is walking or driving, the location might be a route or path followed, which lasts a given length of time. Your place should consist of multiple locations.

View: the totality of what can be seen from any one location.

Gaze: what is seen in a view when particular directions, distances, landmarks, characteristics are called into focus.

Object: Within a gaze, particular thing (a building, sign, rock, bush) to which you draw your audience's attention

Step 1: Writing the Script and Creating the Map (Hardcopy, 50% of Grade)

The first portion of this project to be completed is the script. The script is divided into locations, and presents

See these sample script pages for how these elements must be formatted and coordinated in the pages.

Your Purpose is Larger than Your Place

Key to writing this script is conceiving of a place as a medium for writing, rather than its subject.

A project installed in a neighborhood from your childhood, for instance, could be about family bonds, or the role of sports in Minnesota culture, or the lasting influence of a television show, or the legacy of the Obama administration. The project is not about the neighborhood. Your chosen place or space--and how you have the reader moves within it--is simply the "vehicle" of your thoughts. Your purpose is larger than your place.

Genre, Purpose, Audience

Your script will pursue the purpose and address the audience of a written genre: for example, a magazine feature article, a piece of fiction, a lyric poem, an autobiographical memoir, an argumentative analysis, a book review, etc.

It will realize this purpose, however, in the medium of augmented space. Like the genres mentioned above, your script should have a unified purpose, effect, and tone that is intended to move an intended audience in a particular way: intellectually and/or emotionally.

Title

The purpose, tone, and genre of the piece should be expressed in a well chosen title.

Map

The map should clearly show labeled locations within the place that make up the walk. The map may be hand-drawn, printed from some source, created in software, or some combination of these techniques.

Step 2: Recording the Audio as Digital Files (15% of Grade)

You will learn to use the sound-recording and -editng software Audacity to record your script, mixing the narration with sound effects, music, and other voices as called for in the script.

The walk will be divided among different locations, each with its own recording saved as an .mp3 file.

Like podcasts, this part of the work should also have cover art composed in a 300 x 300 pixel image (in .gif, .jpg, or .png format)

Step 3: Designing and Posting the Web Page (20% of Grade)

You will use Dreamweaver to create a web page for making the project's sound files, maps, images, and other documents available. This is similar to this archive page for the Janet Cardiff's and George Bures Miller's "Her Long Black Hair."

The web page should include

Step 4: Presenting a Live Oral/Visual Demo (15% of Grade)

I will ask you to perform 6-8 minutes of the walk "live" for your classmates.

You will read/perform a portion of your script while presenting visual aids to give the "off-site" audience a sense of experiencing the walk in the place being augmented.

We will discuss various options for presenting this visual dimension of the performance, including Google Map Street Views, screencast videos, slideshow images, etc.

The performance should begin with a very brief explanation of the project as an experiment in writing for augmented space, as opposed to a conventional Powerpoint presentation or talk with visual aids.


Why a live demo?
Imagine that your project is being featured as part of a larger event: your city’s annual summer festival, a local theater company’s season of performances, a fiction-reading series at a club, a local magazine’s special issue on the same topic as your walk, a show at an art gallery downtown, a business’s marketing campaign, etc.

When you launch your augmented-space project, it would be natural to hold some kind of party or reception to announce, publicize, and celebrate the installation, and associate it with that local event or organization. (Notice that the web page for our sample project Passing Stranger mentions a "public reading,” which I imagine would have happened in one of the same Greenwich Village venues where the famous poets featured in the walk had performed.)

This portion of the assignment asks these key questions:
-- What would you say and show to a live audience to give them an enticing sample of what the walk is about, and how it would be to go out and experience?

-- How would you make clear in the live demo that the demo itself is NOT the work, but is a description of the walk, a mere simulation or taste of an experience out there which they need to try?

Requirements for the Live Demo

Resources for Writing in Augmented Space

Augmented Space Media and Services

Student Examples of Assignment

Public Tours, Walks, and Augmented Space Installations

Cardiff and Miller's Augmented-Space Walks

Format and Assignment Materials

Online Services and Resources