The winner of the award will create an interactive art project to enable the public to get text replies from inanimate objects.
Bristol’s first ever Playable City award has been won by Hello Lampost!, a project which allows the public to “to tune in to the secret conversations of the city” using text messages. Street furniture will display different codes that people can use to get the object to text them with messages revealing the hidden life of the city. The project, described as “part game, part story” was created by design and research studio PAN with collaborators Gyorgyi Galik and Tom Armitage. It was chosen from 93 entries to take up the £30,000 commission, which sought to create an original, future-facing work using creative technology to explore the ‘playable city’ theme. The project’s development will be supported by the city’s Watershed arts centre: it will be produced and installed in Bristol this summer before being toured internationally.
www.watershed.co.uk/playablecity