You Are Not Here

Digital forms of mapping enable people to make themselves the centre of their universe, creating a map specific to their desires and necessities. It makes it unclear what the impact is of “YOU ARE HERE” – being always in the centre of the map and no need to orientate yourself – on the collective experience of the city and collaborative practices in it. A web application game YOU ARE NOT HERE made a first attempt to explore this question.

On December 17th Naomi Bueno de Mesquita, TRADERS researcher at Design Academy Eindhoven, tested the web-application together with 9 researchers of the Urban Interfaces group of the University of Utrecht. In the game YOU are no longer in the middle of the screen. Instead, various dots are shown, representing the players who are scattered around the city. The participants had to find out where they were positioned on the screen by physically moving and observing how the dots reacted. After they found themselves they selected a dot to follow. The first person that was able to get near to the dot that he/she was following won. Players started using different strategies of collaboration to explore their position, for instance by giving clues with pictures while still competing. They furthermore started using text messaging to comment on the game and its development.  These interesting findings with regard to (new forms of) collaboration will be further explored as ways to feed more interaction with the city and with people outside of the game.