Project Overview

The initial concept for You Are Here was to create offline wireless nodes that audiences would connect to via their mobile devices as a way of accessing content that was available literally nowhere else. Inspired by the intimacy and immediacy of pieces like artist Janet Cardiff’s audio walks,²⁹ we saw potential for audiences to use their mobile phones as a medium to both easily hear and contribute to the stories we would post.

As we began discussing the larger goals of the project, however, it became clear that insisting on a completely offline configuration would ultimately limit who could participate. While newer mobile phones could upload and download audio and photos directly to the You Are Here node’s browser-based interface, audience members with older phones wouldn’t be able to share their thoughts. Given that inclusivity and engagement were driving motivations for the project, we revised our design to instead rely on an inexpensive call-in service called Twilio³⁰ for gathering audience-contributed content. Because this meant that contributors’ recordings would be collected via a centralized service, we did have to provide the You Are Here node with a certain level of internet connectivity. That said, we preserved the spirit of You Are Here as a local-only listening station by making user-recorded content the only internet-hosted content the device could access. Visitors couldn’t use You Are Here to browse the web, and if the connection went out, a team member could always go to the area to update the content manually.