Steve POOLE
(University of the West of England, Bristol, UK)
Keywords: locative, digital, GPS, heritage,
Abstract:
Locative mobile technologies have been transforming some of the ways in which visitors to heritage sites are addressed, challenging the notion that historical data is best presented for passive consumption, and promoting instead an experiential model of knowledge built upon agency, dialogue and informed decision-making. They make it easier to change the nature of on-site historical interpretation from one in which visitors are left to absorb ‘factual’ information to one in which they are encouraged to participate as interpreters. While the former requires a passive acceptance of the authoritative views of ‘experts’, sometimes without any display of evidence and often without debate, the latter offers visitors a glimpse of the historian’s mental world and requires from them some evaluative thought. Apps that take visitors on a prescribed and guided walking tour of a site are rarely equipped to explore ideas of this kind, and the same is largely true of immersive tools like AR which tend to privilege accurate simulation over alternative forms of interpretation. Yet what most sets historical analysis apart from other forms of enquiry in the arts and social sciences is the fragmentary nature of the evidence around which historians build interpretative frameworks, the material irretrievability of past events (and people), and the inevitability of supposition, argument and disagreement. Construction, in other words, is as necessary a concept to historians as reconstruction. Accepting that history is a practice in which knowledge is crafted from often incomplete evidence challenges the authoritative basis on which explanation is conventionally built and rethinks ‘audiences’ as research participants. Indeed, posing historical questions in Place might also disrupt traditional approaches to research in which the mind has been privileged over the body, intellect over experience, text and object over emotion and hauntology. This paper offers a critical evaluation of recent practice.
Relevance for the conference: looks at ways in which locative mobile technologies can be used to stimulate visual imagination in heritage audiences and explore sensory and emotional models of knowledge
Relevance for the session: fits session objectives of using digital technologies to explore non-directive and experiential approaches to heritage in place
Innovation: I’m not promoting a specific ‘innovation’ but pursuing an argument that demands innovation: for interactive, co-designed and dialogical models of knowledge to replace authoritative didactics in approaches to heritage audiences
References:
• Poole, S., ‘Ghosts in the Garden: locative gameplay and hisorical interpretation from below’, International Journal of Heritage Studies, 24, 3 (2018)
• Gottlieb, O. 2016. “Who Really Said What? Mobile Historical Situated Documentary as Liminal Learning Space.” Gamevironments 5: 237–257