Go for a hike, OR explore a place where nature, culture, and technology converge. The Banff Centre’s ART Mobile Lab is inviting Banff residents and visitors of all ages to Banff’s scenic Hoodoo Trail using the latest in GPS mobile media. A unique project created in cooperation with Parks Canada, Tracklines investigates the use of GPS technology for storytelling and public education in backcountry areas. ART Mobile Lab researchers will be offering live demonstrations on the Hoodoo Trail until September 30. Hike the park’s beautiful landscape, discover stories about the area’s natural history, and contribute to the project by letting researchers know what you think.
Tracklines is an easy to moderate self-guided two hour trek on a three kilometre trail during which hikers use mobile phones and GPS technology to navigate a mountainous landscape. The experience has been described as a ‘walkumentary’ - a stroll of imagination combining elements of documentary and trail-guiding with some very old patterns of storytelling, and some very new innovations in location-based digital media. The project explores how hikers may use mobile phones and GPS devices in mountain environments in the not so distant future.
The ART Mobile Lab is a research initiative of The Banff Centre’s Banff New Media Institute. The lab was created in 2005 to enable research into mobile and location-based media design, art, technology, and cultures of use. The Lab focuses on media created for outdoor spaces and communities – innovative technologies, interactions, and experiences designed for remote locations from cultural heritage sites and wilderness areas to urban parks and environments. Activities include technical research and design, content creation, design research, participatory design and audience evaluation, and artist collaborations, workshops, and training.
The Tracklines tour is absolutely free. Following their hike, participants will be asked to fill out a short questionnaire. They will also receive a discount coupon for the Banff Upper Hot Springs and be entered into a draw to win a Garmin eTrex GPS hiking device. To find out more about Tracklines GPS Guided Tours, please visit the ART Mobile Lab’s web site http://artmobilelab.banff.org , contact us at mobilelab@banffcentre.ca , or phone 403-762-6246.
Background on ART Mobile Lab
In 2006/07, the ART Mobile Lab developed Tracklines, a prototype location-based guided walking tour of Banff’s popular and scenic Hoodoo Trail. The natural history content for this walking tour was co-authored by public educational staff from Banff National Park, who hoped to investigate the potential of handheld mobile technologies for use in delivering multimedia interpretative content to the public in outdoor locations at National Parks and Cultural Heritage sites.
Building upon the success of this initial collaboration, the ART Mobile Lab is now working closely with Banff National Park and The New Media Strategies and Investment Unit of Parks Canada in a research program that uses public demonstrations of the Tracklines prototype as a starting point to evaluate the impact and effectiveness of location-based content and devices in wilderness trail settings, and to determine target audience and user preferences for this type of media in Banff National Park. The results of this research will help to further the work of the New Media Strategies and Investment unit toward developing a locative technology strategy that will apply system-wide at Parks Canada.
The ART Mobile Lab at the Banff New Media Institute is the only research group in Canada that specializes in mobile location-based design and evaluation for outdoor environments. Our unique combination of skills in mobile content creation, experience design, technology development, and media ethnography ensure that we are uniquely situated to conduct this research program.
The investigations behind Tracklines are multi-fold, exploring the place where nature, culture, and technology converge in mobile media experience design. Among other questions, the research is looking into how locative media fits into natural systems, and how this media is positioned to influence human thought and behaviour when encountering and learning about those systems. It explores how people use mobile phones and GPS devices in mountain environments and how they want to use them.
Tracklines has been developed through a rigorous rapid prototyping process using the Mobile Experience Engine (MEE), a unique code-generating tool for the rapid creation of location-aware and context-rich mobile media experiences. The MEE is an original platform and a major software innovation created in-house by the engineers of the ART Mobile Lab and the Mobile Digital Commons Network. For more information about the MEE, please visit: www.open-mee.org
Tracklines Booking Information
Who is invited? We are seeking visitors to Banff National Park and Banff locals of all ages to join us on this adventure. The only pre-requisite is that you must enjoy hiking, and be interested in trying out a guided trail walk that uses mobile phones and GPS technology to tell you stories as you hike. Families are welcome, however, all youth and children under the age of 18 must be accompanied by an adult or legal guardian in order to participate.
What is involved? This experience includes a free demonstration of the Tracklines self-guided hiking tour. Using GPS technology and mobile phones, participants will discover stories about the area’s natural history as they hike the park’s beautiful landscape. After completing the tour, we will ask you to fill out a short questionnaire to tell us what you thought about the experience. The hiking tour and questionnaire will take approximately two hours to complete. This hike involves a walk of approximately three kilometres on the Hoodoo Trail. The trail is of easy to moderate difficulty. Participants are responsible for their own gear, so please bring along any items that you would normally bring when planning to spend a few hours outside in our unpredictable mountain environment.
How do I book a hike? Please contact the ART Mobile Lab at 403-762-6246, or email us at mobilelab@banffcentre.ca. If leaving us a message, please include your name and contact information, and we will get back to you as soon as possible. Please note that, because of the nature of this tour experience, space is limited and it is necessary to keep tour groups small.
How do you find us? The Tracklines guided tour begins at the southern trail head of the Hoodoo Trail, located at the Surprise Corner parking lot. This parking lot is situated above the Bow River near Bow Falls, where Buffalo Street and Tunnel Mountain Drive meet.
