THE STORY
America’s oldest fishing town—Gloucester, MA—is a deep place, sown with stories, family connections, and seafaring traditions. WALKING CINEMA: POSTS FROM GLOUCESTER is a smartphone app that uses GPS, documentary video, augmented reality and on-site installations to reveal Gloucester’s history and character along it’s new 1.2 mile Harborwalk.
THE BUZZ
"An intimate view of the harborfront, giving access to the town’s history — and the water itself — without disturbing the working port, or cutesifying it." - New York Times
Winner: 2013 Gold Muse Award for Best Mobile Production by the American Alliance of Museums.
AUDIENCE:
The tour is designed for families, locals, and all types of travelers to Gloucester. We have found that kids as young as 8 years old enjoy doing WALKING CINEMA with their parents and friends as it feels more like a treasure hunt than history. You can also enjoy the app as a virtual immersion in Gloucester from your armchair.
WALKING CINEMA?
Walking Cinema is a format developed by the multi-platform production company, Walking Cinema (www.walkingcinema.org), and is designed to give audiences a first-person, hands-on experience of history and local culture. Cambridge7 Associates crafted the path and signage for the Harborwalk to support this form of digital and cinematic interpretation.
THE POSTS
The postcards become a mechanism for a local artist to uncover the peculiar character, traditions, and challenges her town has faced. They also become a means for you to immerse yourself in the citys history. Using your phones camera, you are challenged to create 7 augmented reality postcards that mash up your photo with local traditions: carrying the patron saint around town during "fiesta", spotting the legendary "Sea Serpent of Gloucester", and rowing 1000 miles through a storm.
THE VIDEOS AND INSTALLATIONS
POSTS FROM GLOUCESTER guides you from site to site through short, highly-produced videos audiences can watch on smartphones or online at ghwalk.org. In addition, along the Harborwalk are various hands-on installations—a Gloucester rowboat, a photo gallery guessing game, a mysterious fisherman’s shack—that combine with the hand-held video to immerse audiences deeper in the Gloucester experience.