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Details of Grant 

EPSRC Reference: EP/I031839/1
Title: Exploring the potential of networked urban screens for communities and culture
Principal Investigator: Fatah gen Schieck, Professor A
Other Investigators:
Penn, Professor A
Researcher Co-Investigators:
Project Partners:
CABE e11bid HORIZON Digital Economy Research
Waltham Forest Education Services
Department: Bartlett Sch of Graduate Studies
Organisation: UCL
Scheme: Standard Research
Starts: 01 November 2011 Ends: 31 July 2013 Value (£): 233,915
EPSRC Research Topic Classifications:
Human-Computer Interactions Multimedia
Science & Technology Studies Urban & Land Management
EPSRC Industrial Sector Classifications:
Construction Creative Industries
Information Technologies Sports and Recreation
Related Grants:
EP/I031413/1
Panel History:
Panel DatePanel NameOutcome
01 Mar 2011 Digital Economy Research in the Wild Announced
Summary on Grant Application Form
This project brings together University College London, the University of Nottingham, which also hosts the HORIZON Digital Economy Hub, the London Borough of Waltham Forest, the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE) and Leytonstone Business Improvement District (e11bid) to investigate how the urban experience mediated through connected large screens can be designed to augment real world interactions, support communities, and promote and develop culture so as to maximise the quality of the public experience within the urban realm.This project is inherently cross-disciplinary bringing together methods from Architecture and Computer Science. We will work in 'action research' mode engaging research organisations with the end user communities and Waltham Forest council. We will also engage at a national level through the involvement of CABE and Mike Gibbons, Head of Live Sites (a network of permanent large-scale digital screens across the UK). Through an iterative prototyping methodology we will integrate the content development, placement, local interactivity and distributed connectivity of four re-locatable screen nodes connecting Nottingham with London. This set-up will allow us to explore remote connectivity by comparing two with three and four networked nodes, creating situations and experiences that differ in their urban settings and the types of populations they support through different seasons. The screen content will be compared across different locations, allowing us to identify outcomes that are site-specific and ones that can be generalised across different sites. We will develop the screen content (such as applications and experience) and evaluate mediated public interactions around these screens by engaging with the London Borough of Waltham Forest, the local communities around all four nodes locations, and commissioned artists in definition of the research challenges as well as in the programme of research itself. These creative experiments will, however, be carefully designed to contribute to our research understanding of the dimensions of possibility and acceptance by the community. We will document design, management and public meetings and, as research results are generated, feed research findings back into local and policy debate, and feed forward into the design of the experience and interactions mediated through connected screen technologies. Our research takes a targeted and longitudinal approach in order to understand a complex range of social, technical and interactional issues.
Key Findings
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Potential use in non-academic contexts
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Impacts
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Summary
Date Materialised
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Project URL: http://www.screensinthewild.org
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