Playing (with) Mobile Devices and Web Standards ... Together

Abstract

In this talk, we present an overview of the experiences we conducted with developers, artists, pedagogues, and many different audiences over the past three years in the framework of the CoSiMa research project. The hypothesis of our research was that people would more or less spontaneously take their mobile device out of their pocket to join others around them in making music together. Our methodology basically consisted in trying everything we could and taking on any collaboration that fitted this hypothesis while carefully observing various design aspects. We have focussed in this work on the exploration of affordances of mobile devices and web standards which we consider to be strong ecological factors in the development of communication, entertain- ment, and poetry. The talk includes a panorama of the applications and scenarios (i.e. participative concerts, installations, and workshops) we have developed over the past three years as well as an overview of the most important findings we have been able to formulate so far. The presentation concludes with a collective improvisation in which we invite the audience to participate.