Re-connecting visual content to place in a mobile guide for the Shrine of Remembrance

Abstract

This paper describes a project carried out by the authors to design and evaluate a mobile guide with visual content for a large and significant war memorial in Melbourne called 'The Shrine of Remembrance'. A practical intention was to display items from extensive, but currently unseen, archives of historic materials, including architectural drawings, iconic postcards, film of past ceremonies of remembrance, and oral accounts of war experience. A parallel intention was to address the problem, identified in previous research into audio-tours, of individual visitors becoming isolated in an electronic 'information bubble' that inhibits the social dimension of visiting and learning about places. In contrast to the immersive style of many audio-tours, we set out to investigate the use of relatively lean and fragmentary visual and audio content intended to provoke new readings of the material site and to exist alongside the social activity of visiting.