Physical interventions in a location based cultural narrative: a case study of embedded media in public space installations

The majority of large scale media embedded into public spaces clashes with the existing architectural and cultural characteristics of an environments. This paper discusses the challenge to overcome this phenomenon through the design of new embedded artifacts which tie interactive media elements into existing physical properties of an environment, whether material, spatial, cultural, or social, to fluidly mesh and compliment a shared public space. Design challenges and guidelines are explored through the presentation of two experimental installations developed by the authors- the Algorithmic Topiary and Thermochromic Laundry Line. The site specific installations were created as physical interventions as part of the History Unwired Project, a mobile device based walking tour in the Castello neighborhood of Venice, Italy, and were intended to bring attention and dynamism to the physical and ephemeral elements of the environments which the tour describes.