Urban Tapestries, Screen Shot 1, 2003-2004 Virtual Museum of Canada
Home | Feedback
Urban Tapestries, presented in London, England, is a software platform that provided public authoring and knowledge sharing through mobile technology and geographic information systems as an alternative to the institutional map. The project allowed users to annotate the official maps and the public spaces around them as they explored it. The image represented here is a screen shot of a PDA with an urban map overlayed with abstract vectors on the screen.

Urban Tapestries, Screen Shot 1, 2003-2004

Utilizing a wireless network, users can log into the system and experience or contribute location based-stories, images and text through their mobile devices (PDAs, Mobile Telephones, etc.). In this way, they are creating an alternate city map based on personal, first-hand participation. Urban Tapestries is formally analogous to Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia that allows edits and contributions from any users and is neither curated nor edited.

Urban Tapestries was created by Proboscis in 2002 as a research project to explore the convergence of locative media and its social implications. Led by Giles Lane with Alice Angus, Paul Bichard, and Nick West, the current team includes Michael Golembewski, Paul Makepeace, George Papamarkos, Sarah Thelwall, and Zoe Sujon. They are currently based in the UK.


Copyright © 2006 Gallery TPW
All Rights Reserved

next in series next in series