You can now create your own Interactive Walk by Using Prospero’s GPS feature.
C&T’s Assistant Director Max Dean talks to us about the possibilities of Prospero’s GPS’s feature
GPS Technology and Theatre is on the rise.
Max is at the forefront of exploring the potential’s of what Digital Technology and Theatre can do in the 21st Century.
He’s currently studying for his PhD.
Exploring the lay over’s between Gamification and Applied Theatre.
C&T is our Company. Prospero is our new tool
The world is changing and so is theatre. Prospero, C&T’s online digital content creation platform, is evolving what theatre and education can be. Theatre can take place on our streets, our buildings, in our parks - anywhere you can imagine it and now you can make your own narratives a reality too. Our GPS feature makes this possible. You can now make your own interactive walks. This is still very new technology. Listen to this interview with our Assistant Director to find our more.
Index
How long have you been with C&T
How has the company changed since you started working for C&T?
What is GPS feature - and how have you used it?
Why is the GPS feature great for a wide range of creative avenues?
How do you create content for place?
How do i start using the GPS feature?
What is the potential of this feature within Theatre going forward?
Why is this such an exciting time for Prospero and Theatre?
“Ive been part of C&T for 20 years”
“Prospero really opens up the capacities of digital technology. It can enable the kind of social benefit that we know the arts and drama and applied art forms can achieve at scale, distance and at a reach that has never been possible before.”
We’ve created a number of these walks now. The most recent one I worked on was with a disability arts group run by Blue Apple Theatre Company, who were looking to find a way of keeping their young theatre group open during lockdown. During the pandemic there wasn’t really much they could do, but the one thing they could do was walking. So they worked on designing an interactive walk around their city.
Whilst we have ideas and ways of using Prospero, different artists, different voices, different lived experiences, different perspectives, different people can all use this technology to their own ends. There are musical composers using the GPS function, alongiside health organisations and domestic violence charities. It can we used in all kinds of ways.
The use of GPS in a performance context or educational context is a brand new thing. Prospero makes this brand new thing available very easily to almost any artist.
Think about what role the location is playing in this experience. What are trying to achieve? What do you want the outcome or experience to be, and then think how can location and place help you achieve whatever that aim is, once you’ve figured that out you will probably have a good idea of how you can utilise GPS.
Prospero is about activating kinaesthetic practice in a space. If you look around at the way technology is developing now, take something like gaming for instance. Look at the rise of mixed reality games. Pokemon Go was hugely popular. These technologies and ways of engaging are hugely performative and the people who are the experts of these popular cultural practices are artists and young people
.
What site-specific piece of theatre has had the reach of Pokemon GO? I would say there hasn’t been one. Prospero means there could be!
