This locative media project is centered upon starting up communication of a friendly conversational type in the Oxford Valley Mall, specifically between operators of kiosks that are stationed throughout the store, but aren't built into the mall. The whole idea I had was these kiosks located around malls are like little islands in the middle of everywhere, any yet simultaneously isolated. With proper stores in a mall, it's a bit more of an intimate setting that feels more indoors. Workers may feel more free to talk with customers about things other than business, and co-workers can chat with each other idly pretty well. With these stands, they're normally operated by one person each. Occasionally two but not often. And it seemed to me these people are dealing with customers all the time, sitting in a sea of people walking everywhere, but not really communicating with anyone in a personal way, nor is it necessarily easy to leave their post and chat with someone say at another stand. In fact someone working there may have never really talked to anyone else operating another stand. So my idea revolves around creating a little network of communication between them all, see if friendships can be started up, and see if the space in which they exist can change from being simply a place of work, to a place with loads of people they know.My communication method will be slips of paper that have a few questions written on them:
1) What is your name?
2) Where are you from?
3) What is your life ambition?
4) What's one thing about you that you think is interesting?
5) What is one question you have about someone at a neighboring booth?
There is one rule to the final question, which is it shouldn't be directly related to their job, such as asking the price of something they're selling. The goal is to initiate personal converation, not business.
One person, who doesn't work at the mall at all, will initiate this whole thing by handing a questionnaire to a person at a kiosk. When they have a chance they can fill it out, and based on whichever booth was mentioned in the last question, the person will then take it to that booth, and repeat the process. That person will answer all 5 as well as whatever the previous booth operator wanted to know. The person, let's call him the moderator, will then bring it to the next and so on and so on. Until finally it gets to the opposite end of the mall, at which point the final person will have to ask a question of the first booth operator. The question will be brought to the first operator, who will answer, as well as read all the various responses and questions everyone posed and answered. The moderator will then take it to each booth that was encountered again, so everyone can read it. (Note, while Day by Day Calendar Co. is the final point on the map above, there are more places than shown.)
This is a bit of an unorthodox type of game as the trigger points-the booth operators-are also the players themselves. This means that whoever initiates the game won't so much be playing as they will be observing the whole thing play out. The intended goal is that these people spread across the mall will have met some new people, have made contact in some way, and possibly become friendly. Normally they might not have even been aware of them, being primarily focused on the job at hand. That said the moderator will be able to observe and experience what's going on by reading the responses each person gave, and since they are physically meeting each person, will also become familiar with a lot of people.
Here's a basic runthrough of how the narrative might pan out:
1)I give the questionnaire to the operator of the Piercing Pagoda.
They respond that their name is Jim Lampwick from Bensalem, PA, and he'd like to one day write a book about something. He thinks it's interesting that he knows the names of all 43 presidents, and would like to know the favorite movie of the woman at David's Cookies across the way.2) The moderators takes it to David's Cookies.
She answers that her favorite movie is A Fish Called Wanda, and her name is Julia Moss of Langhorne, PA. She would like to be a trombone player in a major symphony orchestra, and she can hear some frequencies so low they're out of normal human range. She then asks the man at the Gold Buyers booth if he's ever travelled anywhere interesting.
3)The moderator forwards that filled in slip to Gold Buyers.
He answers that he's been to Finland once visiting relatives. He also answers his name is Roger Hanski, from Neshaminy, PA. He's perfectly happy doing what he does, although he would like to someday meet Sean Penn. He can also recite Pi to 20 decimal places.
The cycle continues.
As far as the relationship between the place and narrative, the idea is primarily to have interactions with people you wouldn't normally ask personal questions, as well as creating communication among themselves, thus making the wide open walking areas of the mall seem a bit smaller, as the people stationed about it are no longer strangers, creating metaphorically bridges between the islands.
Ultimately my goal is to make this space smaller. What intrigued me about a mall is how crowded it is, yet how simultaneously impersonal it also is. What drew me to booth operators is how isolated they are in all of this. The intended goal is to take the place they exist in, and make it more intimate by initiating communication that may not have taken place before. It's intended the change the overall mood or impersonal nature of the mall.
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