Heritage Belongs To You
Heritage is not locked up in musuems, it is all around us.
Cultural heritage is not the prerogative of museums. It is everywhere around us.
With a group of volunteers that look after the Sheffield General Cemetery, we explored this example of our local heritage at designed an interactive experience for it.
Sheffield has a history of non conformity. The Sheffield General Cemetery is now a city park and a natural reserve. Working with the Friends of the General Cemetery, a group of volunteers that look after the Sheffield General Cemetery, we understood that an historical place has many reasons to be loved and cherished as each individual appreciate what resonates with their own personal story.
The concept of a multi-narrative soundscape enables the visitor to explore the many stories of a place; they can follow a single theme or switch and listen to different possibly contrasting stories. We implemented this concept for the Sheffield General Cemetery as a smart and interactive book: the soundscape is activated by the visitors walking the grounds; when in an area of interest, a loud sound attracts the visitors’ attention and invites them to get closer; there, the stories are told in place via a bluetooth loudspeaker; the visitor can listen to multiple stories by placing a bookmark on a different page or move on.
The study with the volunteers suggested four themes: naturalistic as the Cemetery is a natural reserve in the city; socio-historical with the stories of those buried there in the 19th century; weird & wonderful with curiosities and anecdotes; and the volunteers favourite places.
“What we want people to feel is that this is a welcoming place and it’s a pleasant place and it was designed as a park.
This was to be the Elysian Fields, it wasn’t gloomy, and it was somewhere where you could come and bring a picnic. You could come and see Auntie Nelly, but you had your sandwiches and everything as well, you know” (Jenny, tour guide)
The Museo Storico Italiano della Guerra invited us to port the concept of narratives in place and the interactive book to the trenches of WWI in the Italian Alps. However, the type of outdoor heritage is very different: the Cemetery is a city park where visitors stroll and sit around, the Trenches are in the Alps and require to walk tracks. We then designed a different device for the same concept inspired by WWI soldier’s kit: the visitors wear an interactive belt and walk the archeological site to activate the soundscape; they use the cards to select the stories to listen to.
Findings:
The two devices, the book and the belt, are very different, but implement the same concept. To understand the effect of changing the device, we conducted an evaluation with nine volunteers that visited the trenches in small groups. The effect of the voices coming from the place was greatly appreciated and sparked much conversation. Each group followed their own personal visiting path and listened to many different stories. Poetry was unexpected and appreciated: “I am not one for poetry… but it is different, a poem in here”.
The device, the book vs. the belt, had a strong impact on the experience. The book carried meaning that affected the interaction (it was associated to tourist guides) while the belt was free from unwelcome associations.
Project dates
2013
2013
Publications
Ciolfi, L. and Petrelli, D. (2015) Studying a Community of Volunteers at a Historic Cemetery to Inspire Interaction Concepts. In De Cindio, F., Pipek, V. and Avram, G. (Eds.), Proceedings of Communities & Technologies 2015, Limerick (Ireland), 27 June-1 July 2015.
This paper was voted Best Paper by those who attended the conference.
L.Ciolfi, D. Petrelli, F. Caparrelli, N. Dulake, R. Goldberg, M. Willox (2013) Exploring Historical, Social and Natural Heritage: Challenges for Tangible Interaction Design at Sheffield General Cemetery. NODEM 2013 Nordic Digital Excellence in Museums Conference.
Research by
Daniela Petrelli
Nick Dulake
Mark Marshall
Luigina Ciolfi.
Visiting Student: Robin Goldberg
