Legal graffiti

Presence

Esther de Charon
Netherlands Design Institute
esther@design-inst.nl

The goal of the Presence project is to develop innovative ways in which information and communications technology can be used by older people within their local communities.

During the first year-and-a-half of the Presence project over 50 concepts were designed, and five of those are being built and tested during the last part of the project. One of these is the Projected Realities system, tested in June in the Bijlmermeer(or Bijlmer), a ‘notorious’ neighbourhood in Amsterdam.

Over the past two years we have tried, through various innovative means, to gain insight in the people and culture of the Bijlmer. While it is a troubled neighbourhood, it is also rich in cultural diversity and pride. Local people have talked about the dangers of living there, but have also expressed, more emphatically, their frustration with the area’s bad reputation, and their desire for outsiders to understand the rewards of living in the Bijlmer.

The Projected Realities system responds to these things. Designed by the team from the Royal College of Art, the system enables a kind of legal graffiti. It allows inhabitants to communicate their attitudes, opinions and feelings within the neighbourhood; to outsiders, it provides a glimpse into the Bijlmer behind the stark facades of the buildings.

The Projected Realities system has two major visible components, namely

• three slogan-benches, which will be installed along pedestrian routes through the Bijlmer. These will look like traditional benches, except for a motorised scroll in the backrest which will show slogans — short comments, questions, exhort-ations, or observations — written by local elders. The scroll turns automatically, but passers-by can also select slogans manually.

• an image-bank, which will be placed along a major road near the Bijlmer. This head-high metal construction will contain five video monitors that will show images collected by the local elder group. The images change to reflect activity on the slogan-benches.

A third, less visible component of the system will automatically telephone volunteer inhabitants and ask them to select a slogan from a booklet provided beforehand which expresses their attitude. On the basis of this, slogans will be shown on nearby slogan benches; and these will, in turn, send different images to the image bank.

The Presence Slogan-Bench

In short, the Projected Realities system is a public communication system that can be genuinely owned and inhabited by local residents, and that crosses cultural, ethnic, and age boundaries.

Presence web site: www.presenceweb.org

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