The blog is an online space for the presentation of research for my masters thesis in landscape architecture. Landscape Elucidate is a buzz statement that encompasses the practice of using a smart phone to reveal and experience the urban environment. I have been fascinated with technology since a young age and the smart phone is my latest muse. It is with us at all times and at times feels like a living companion during our daily life. It seems to me that the interaction with a smart phone itself takes on the quality of a game and it is from this game-like relationship that I have approached this research. With the smart phone we can create digital fingerprints of our experience with the landscape and leave a bread crumb trail for others to follow and improvise with their unique interactions. I augment and emphasize this game-like experience with the smart phone by utilizing smart phone applications like Foursquare, Google My Tracks, SoundCloud, and Project Noah. With the ever increasing number of smart phones in use, and signs of this trending slowing, I felt it important to contribute to the dialogue about how smart phones can positively connect us to the world and each other.
This blog contains maps and photos of walks I have conducted with my smart phone (a rooted Samsung Vibrant) around the city of Albuquerque. In addition to the walks, I constructed a series of five objects (QR code stands to be more specific) meant to be interacted with in a sequence that I have placed in various locations throughout the city in an attempt to create a narrative and language for smart phone users to read. This is just one way that a smart phone centric design could materialize and is in no way meant to be the only solution that a designer could employ.
For the final aspect of the research I have recruited other smart phone users to go out and walk with their smart phones and contribute to this dialogue by adding photos and impressions of their experience.
