Description
TRANSPORT is an ongoing project prototyped during the 2007/2008 Telus Interactive Arts and Entertainment residency at the Canadian Film Centre Media Lab.
TRANSPORT posits public transport as a third space via a series of very short narrative video clips of stories that happened on public transport, “found” stories that happened to us or stories we witnessed, illuminating the quick insight that people have into each other when they travel or wait together.
The stories tell of encounters on subways, streetcars or buses, aiming to make public transport romantic and to give it a grunge glamour: the interesting life does not happen in your car – life happens in public transport, where you see people, hear people and meet people. Our project is a campaign for a certain civility that will lead to people taking out the earphones, putting away the cell phones, making eye contact, looking at each other; greeting each other, talking to each other, charming each other; and finally, looking out for each other.
The video-clips are delivered on interactive screens that literally put the viewer into the picture, and are made available for broadcast on the One Stop screens already in place in subway stations, community TV stations, and pod-casts. All video clips will be available on the project website. The video clips will be supported and promoted by posters, postcards, and chapbooks.
User Experience
The interactive screens are meant to be installed in public transport nodes: subway platforms, streetcar stations, bus stops, places where people wait. The screens are in the shape of a poster, as ordinarily found in such places – and could be mistaken at first glance for such a poster. The image the viewer sees on the screen is a black and white loop of the first few frames of a micro-narrative clip with the tag line: “TRANSPORT: LIFE HAPPENS IN PUBLIC TRANSPORT”. If the viewer pauses in front of the screen a sensor will detect a presence and software will track a face. If the face pauses for more than 5 seconds, colour seeps into the “poster” and the narrative clip starts playing. At the end of the clip the screen will display a black and white still of the captured image of the viewer, with the same tagline: “TRANSPORT: LIFE HAPPENS IN PUBLIC TRANSPORT.”
The face tracking software continues to track the viewer's face. If the viewer leaves, the first few black and white frames of the next narrative clip will come up and will keep looping, until the next viewer is detected. If the viewer chooses to continue looking, the next narrative clip simply plays. At the end of each narrative clip the image of the viewers is displayed under the tag line. The image of the viewer is black and white and reversed, and acts as a pseudo-mirror, reflecting the viewer, but also transporting the viewer into a narrative space that invites answers to questions such as: “ Where have you been? What have you seen? What is your story?”
Integration and Collaboration
The type of narrative used in TRANSPORT comes from Isabella Stefanescu's practice as a visual artist – she is a chronic keeper of journals and sketchbooks - and uses the quick observation of the drawer and the painter. This rather literal view of the world is the stalk on which the film-making vision of Carlito Ghioni is grafted: the expressive devices of silent cinema make these rather ordinary stories poetic and poignant, a mood perfectly evoked by Nick Storring's original score.
Impact on the Artists Involved
The narrative clips were shot in HDV and edited to fit the vertical format of the interactive screens. This resulted in a narrative that is neither cinema nor TV, but a format eminently suited to intimacy, the video equivalent of chamber music. Many times in the editing Ghioni made a kind of decoupage from the original frame, to form a sequence from images that were shot simultaneously, resulting in compositions more often seen in painting than in cinema: this way of editing is one of the most interesting by-products of TRANSPORT, and Stefanescu and Ghioni hope to explore this method in future projects.
Audience and Community
TRANSPORT is addressed to people who have to commute and those who choose to take public transit. By encouraging passengers to think of their trip as a possible adventure, TRANSPORT creates a community of people who pay attention to each other, which necessarily will translate into understanding, compassion and civility. Ultimately TRANSPORT aims to convince the users of cars that traveling by public transport is not only better for the environment, it's better for the soul – and possibly better for one's social life.
Community Outreach
The prototype of TRANSPORT has been presented as part of New Sub+Urban Realities conference organized by the Communication and Culture Information Technology program at Sheridan College in March 2008.