The future of digital archive collections: Augmenting public service media geo-locative archives

Abstract

During 2011, the now defunct ABC Pool (abc.net.au/pool) project developed an experiment that sought to combine emerging augmented reality (AR) technology with the archival collection of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). The MyBurb project attempted to alter experiences of Australian suburbs by augmenting ABC archives in contemporary suburban environments to explore the blur between physical and digital spaces with its citizens. Mobile media, specifically geo-locative AR applications such as Layar are “one of the most widely used mobile AR applications” (Liao & Humphreys, 2014, p. 2) and challenge the sociological implications of hybrid spaces as “[m]obile interfaces … allow users to be constantly connected to the Internet while walking through urban spaces” (de Souza e Silva, 2006, p. 261). The project was successfully implemented, but was rarely utilized by the audience it sought to engage, revealing a division between aspects of the ABC’s remit and engaging its audience through mobile technology and environmental hybridity. This observation supports the cultural production gap Hesmondhalgh (2007) identified between the production and consumption of cultural goods, which I argue could be facilitated through technological intermediation as part of the broader concept of cultural intermediation (Hutchinson, 2013; Maguire & Matthews, 2010; Negus, 2002). How then could cultural intermediation facilitate the collaborative production of cultural goods to include the affordances of geo-locative media while avoiding the disconnection between the MyBurb project and its stakeholders? The data presented within this paper represents 3 years of research at ABC Pool where I was embedded as the community manager/researcher in residence.