Wanderlost app

For the main Journey to Abadyl in Kristianstad och Copenhagen, we made a Mobil App together with Magnus Wallon. The app runs on both IOS and Android and can be played in the central parts of Kristianstad and in Copenhagen nearby Kødtbyen.

The first format for participation we developed is the app WanderLost that invites participants to a journey, a hike in their own everyday environment to support a reflective walking experience, moving through a city space, to notice what they have already seen, sharpened their attention about the familiar and ordinary. This will happen weeks before the arrival in Kødtbyen for the main event to prepare their arrival, and also provide us with background data of each visitor, that vi can use to trigger specific events for the participants themselves. This experience itself builds upon a larger tradition of both literature and art. In the book, Wanderlust Rebecca Solnit gives several examples of the walking experience.

“Walking ideally, is the state in which the mind, the body, and the world are aligned, as though they were three characters finally in conversation together, three notes suddenly making a chord. Walking allows us to be in our bodies and in the world without being made busy by them. It leaves us free to think without being wholly lost in our thoughts.”

The App

The first format for participation we developed is the app Wanderlost that invite participants to a journey, a hike in their own everyday environment to support a reflective walking experience, moving through a city space to notice what they have already seen and to sharpen their attention about the familiar and ordinary. A first prototype was developed to the event in Kristianstad and tested out during the event.

Screen images from the app Wanderlost – in Swedish as all texts in the app and the Guides.

This experience are build upon a larger tradition in both literature and art. In the book, Wanderlust Rebecca Solnit gives several examples of the walking experience.

“Walking ideally, is the state in which the mind, the body, and the world are aligned, as though they were three characters finally in conversation together, three notes suddenly making a chord. Walking allows us to be in our bodies and in the world without being made busy by them. It leaves us free to think without being wholly lost in our thoughts.”

The interactive element in the GPS-navigated Wanderlost app is a walk where the user choose one point of two available when you are in the range of the interactive point a question/challenge are posted on the mobile screen where you can be asked: “What is unfamiliar and/or alien here?” You reply with taking a picture and posting that in the app. After the interactive walk, the user has re-discovered and re-experienced the streets and blocks in their neighborhood and receive a feedback from the app with the images and captions they experienced and reflected upon.

Screen images from the installation at Kristianstad konsthall
Wanderers Kristianstads konsthall

The app can be re-used and re-explored several times, it opens up with an introduction where you meet one of seven Guides and the questions/challenges you receive are randomized from an online database so each interactive walk will never be the same.

The app and concept was researched in this paper Wanderlost CW 2014

Read more about it in this eu report