Since my last presentation, where I discussed the idea of using digital billboards, I took Larissa’s feedback and developed this idea further. The question I present to you all is: How can the use of hashtags promote civic participation in both the digital and real world to rebuild the foot traffic throughout Melbourne’s businesses since Covid?
This led me to designing the idea I will be presenting today.
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I have labelled this project #ActivateMelbourne. This idea has evolved over the weeks to be built into a project that combines both digital world and real world through the use of hashtags. #ActivateMelbourne is an interactive digital display that would be active in Fed Square, as the HQ, and various locations around Melbourne. Using the current Digital Facade that has been planted in Fed Square, which features 7m x 6.9m dimension and offers 1920×1080 resolution visuals. This project aims to encourage civic participation through QR coding and hashtag displays around that city to lead to clues that link to secret venues and events hosted throughout Melbourne. The public are able to use the QR code found only in Fed Square, to reveal weekly clues that lead to a single destination. The secret venue / event will be located within Melbourne’s CBD and offers an exclusive experience for those who can find it. The #ActivateMelbourne found on the Instagram explore page, will be the hub for individuals to share that they have unveiled the secret locations and offer extra clues for ongoing participants via social media pages.
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My target market would focus of young adults and tourists who wish to experience Melbourne in a different way that offers exclusive experience once the clue is solved. I decided to target this market as they are effective over social media and enjoy the exclusive nature of events. Since Covid, Melbourne’s foot traffic within the city has been impacted detrimentally. This project aims to rebuild what was lost by encouraging the public to participate and reignite Melbourne’s nightlife.
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Firstly, I would like to elaborate on the way that this idea expands on an existing project. The digital facade is Melbourne’s beloved big screen that lights up Fed Square 24/7. Being one of the most foot-trafficked locations in Melbourne, this digital display acts as accelerant for prompted civic participation. Taking a hit due to covid, my idea aims to rebuild and encourage individuals to revisit this digital experience.
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Its current use displays art, news, live sporting events, cultural events, animations and more. These events encourage participants to sit and watch while engaging with the screen. By using the Digital Facade, I ideated ways that further encourage foot traffic in a creative way.
#ActivateMelbourne would be an extension that displays on the Digital Facade. My idea is an adaptation of Bennet, Wells and Freelon’s description of ‘acualizing citizenship’, which states the rise of actions using mobile media ‘that draw attention to self-expression, emotional involvement, and intrinsic motivation’.
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The exclusivity and mystery of this project acts as intrinsic motivation for users and participants to activate themselves over digital and real world. Revealing an exclusive experience through the use of clues and hashtagging navigation over Instagram offers as an incentive for people to commit to the project. A further use of hashtags would be extra locations exposing just the words #ActivateMelbourne. There would be no context or explanation behind the billboard. This lack of knowledge aims to lure in new participants to engage online and discover the some what “hidden treasures” of Melbourne.
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The idea of intimate publics, which is defined as strangers who consume common texts and things together, by Lauren Berlant, play in conjunction with the use of hashtagging in this project. By projecting a hashtag that eludes to exclusive clues that lead you to an unknown location further encourages the public to participate. The locations could be in collaboration with small businesses around Melbourne to assist in rebuilding foot traffic post pandemic. Magdalena Olszanowskir agues that hashtags play a vital role in the production of intimate publics and are co-constitutive in the development and maintenance of communicative exchange on Instagram.
Through using hashtags as a form of communication enlightens others to be able to search, navigate and participate in the project thus further increasing its engagement and the results of this idea.
To further encourage participation I would
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References:
Glas, René, et al., editors. (2019), The Playful Citizen: Civic Engagement in a Mediatized Culture. Amsterdam University Press, http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvcmxpds.
Linke, G. (2011), ‘The Public, the Private, and the Intimate: Richard Sennett’s and Lauren Berlant’s Cultural Criticism in Dialogue’, in Biography 34, no. 1: 11–24, doi:10.1353/bio.2011.0013.
Olszanowski, M (2015), ‘The 1×1 Common: The Role of Instagram’s Hashtag in the Development and Maintenance of Feminist Exchange‘, Peter Lang Publishing, 229-242
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