“it is like someone is imprisoned in the place”




“Sound in the headphone isolates, it becomes your own thoughts. Sound in place - like here - it is a narrative that comes directly from this place, that past”

To design for an outdoor heritage poses specific challenges (no power, large and open spaces) and offers unique opportunities (immersive and multisensory experiences). Working with a group of volunteers at 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. 

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 - 2014

Publications

Petrelli, D., Dulake, N., Marshall, M. T., Pisetti, A., Not, E. (2016) Voices from the War: Design as a Means of Understanding the Experience of Visiting Heritage. Proc. of ACM CHI’16 International Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 1033-1044. 

Marshall M. T., Petrelli D., Dulake N., Not E., Marchesoni M., Trenti E., Pisetti A. (2016) Audio-based narratives for the trenches of World War I: Intertwining stories, places and interaction for an evocative experience. International journal of human-computer Studies – IJHCS, 85, January, 27-39. 

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 as best paper, people’s choice

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

Partners & Stakeholders
Anna Pisetti - Museo Storico Italiano della Guerra (Italy)

Elena Not - Fondazione Bruno Kessler (Italy).


Funders
meSch (EU FP7-ICT-2011-9 GA:600851)