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Simon and Garfunkel may have sung about happily chatting to New York street furniture back in the 1960s, but this summer Bristol will get its chance to feel groovy on the city streets.
Lamp posts, as well as bus stops and pillar boxes, will soon become more personal items in people’s lives thanks to a £30,000 award which will change the way people interact with the city.
Bristol’s pioneering Watershed media centre has announced Hello Lamp Post! as the winner of the city’s first ever Playable City Award, which attracted 93 entries from around the world.
Part game, part story, anyone can play by texting in a unique code found on familiar street objects.
The project uses the codes that city councils and public servants use to tell one object from another when a light bulb needs changing or a bus stop repairing.
Every pillar box in Bristol has a six figure code, every bollard has two, some of the benches have seven and the storm drains have 14. This summer anyone will be able to text the word ‘Hello’ + the name of the object + its code to a special phone number and the item of street furniture will immediately text back with a question.
PAN Studios, who came up with the idea, now has three months to develop the work before the final project goes live in the summer.
Musician Imogen Heap was one of the judges, while Tom Uglow – a creative director at Google – praised the potential of the ‘internet of things’.
He said: “Hello Lamp Post! stood out with a potential for both art and play using existing urban furniture. It points to a future made up of the physical objects already around us, the ‘internet of things’, and the underlying complexity is made simple and easy for people by just using SMS for this project.
“Poetry and technology combine to create subtle and playful reflections of the world we live in. It filled me with a childish delight.”
Follow updates on the Hello Lamp Post! project at watershed.co.uk/playablecity
