angel island mobile presentation

Angel Island Mobile

Ruth Tringham, U.C. Berkeley and Center for Digital Archaeology and

Pietro Ferraris, Map2App

CoDACenter for Digital Archaeology

Videowalks-the Original Idea: The Remediated Places Project

From 1997 to 2008, with Steve Mills and Michael Ashley, I ran an archaeological project and then an interpretive multimedia project at a 9000 year old mound settlement at Çatalhöyük, Turkey called the Remediate Places Project. As part of the latter I developed self-guided tours around this very large site, incorporating multimedia content that could be served to mobile devices.

Videowalks-the Original Idea

The Remediated Places Project project emerged out of a dream for video-tours at Çatalhöyük using a technology that at that time (2004-2007) did not exist. You can see Steve Mills here pretending to use the content on his iPod which was being activated by a wi-fi cell nearby (in my imagination)

Technology changes

Mobile Technology, Smart Phones GPS

The technology now is much more appropriate to self-guided tour development using mobile devices than it was when I left off the project in 2007, let alone when I first started 2004. This is due to the huge increase in global positioning system satellite coverage reaching to places in the middle of nowhere like Çatalhöyük, and smart mobile phones that have GPS capabilities built in them, as well as cellular technology that enables them to communicate with servers on the fly.

Mobile Travel GuidesCreation Platform

Pietro Ferraris

Then in 2012 through my colleagues at CoDA I came in contact with this guy, Pietro Ferraris, one of the founders of Map2App (http://www.map2app.com/). I realized that with their platform map2app I might be able to put my dream into practice. And so I became one of their Beta authors. Map2app is the first web platform to turn travel related content into high performance mobile travel guides for iPhone and Android that are distributed on the Apple Store and Google Play. By now over 200 travel guides have been created with this platform.

It is a wizard-like platform with professional results.No coding experience is required. A user can create a mobile travel guide in a few hours that looks great and works smoothly

How map2app Works, part 1

Map2app provides an earth friendly expandable set of travel guides as an alternative to the mass of paper ones that usually provide guides and orientation. The apps are automatically generated by the platform. So you the author just have to upload your content (such as locations with photos, stories, events) to your account on their production website, and the wheels of the platform do the rest, and it launches on your mobile phone. So the cost of creating an app, and technical skills to do it, is really low, much less than making a website, allowing any kind of user to create a professional-looking mobile solution.

Angel Island

”Angel Island is something of a foreign land in the midst of busy daily lives for most Bay Area residents” Ava Roy, WePlayers and Amy Brees, CSP

In this paper Pietro and I present a mobile application that we created using the map2app platform for a particular cultural heritage location – Angel Island.

Angel Island

”Angel Island is something of a foreign land in the midst of busy daily lives for most Bay Area residents” Ava Roy, WePlayers and Amy Brees, CSP

Angel Island is the biggest island in the San Francisco Bay. It is currently a California State Park and is a popular destination for visitors to San Francisco and local residents. The only people who live here are park staff. I love the description of Angel Island that it “is something of a foreign land in the midst of busy daily lives for most Bay Area residents” (Ava Roy, WePlayers and Angel Brees, AI State Park Superintendent). Seen but not seen

US Military on Angel Island

Civil War Era

click The military occupation began with defensive big guns pointing west in the Civil War, changing to garrisons that catered increasingly for preparing soldiers for foreign wars, click Spanish-American War,click and the WW1 and WW 2. Parallel with preparing soldiers to go west was controlling the immigrants entering the US from the Pacific. This was the Ellis Island of the West. click The Immigration Station and the military were all gone by 1945. click After a little blip of military renewal in the form of Nike Missiles atop Angel Island in 1950 and 60s, the Army finally left, and Angel Island became a State Park.


Spanish-American War

Visitors picnic, bike and hike here exploring the island’s landscape with spectacular views on San Francisco and its bay. They also explore its buildings from the US military occupation of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. click The military occupation began with defensive big guns pointing west in the Civil War, changing to garrisons that catered increasingly for preparing soldiers for foreign wars, click Spanish-American War,click and the WW1 and WW 2. Parallel with preparing soldiers to go west was controlling the immigrants entering the US from the Pacific. This was the Ellis Island of the West. click The Immigration Station and the military were all gone by 1945. click After a little blip of military renewal in the form of Nike Missiles atop Angel Island in 1950 and 60s, the Army finally left, and Angel Island became a State Park.


World War 1 and 2

The garrisons were greatly enlarged to cater for the employment and deployment of soldiers in the WW1 and WW 2. Parallel with preparing soldiers to go west was controlling the immigrants entering the US from the Pacific. This was the Ellis Island of the West.


Cold War 1950-60

The Immigration Station and the military were all gone by 1945. There was a little blip of military renewal in the form of Nike Missiles atop Angel Island in 1950 and 60s.


Immigration Memorial

Visitors Center

Reenactment Center

Reenactment Center

East Garrison Center

In 1967 the Army finally left, and Angel Island became a State Park.Now visitors picnic, bike and hike here exploring the island’s landscape with spectacular views on San Francisco and its bay. They also explore its mosaic of buildings - mostly ruined - from the US military occupation and US Immigration Service of the island.

WePlayers: Angel Island Odyssey App, 2012

We Players facilitated an intimate experience of Angel Island and its diverse historiesthrough their island-wide, interactive performance adventure of The Odyssey on

weekends, May 12 – July 1, 2012

My first app for Angel Island was created as a guide for the audience of a roving performance of the Odyssey, by a local Bay Area theater company called WePlayers in summer 2012. I volunteered as part of the production crew (entirely another story) and it occurred to me that the audience experience could be greatly enhanced by a companion that told them about where they were, what they were watching, how far to walk, where the nearest toilets were and when they should eat during the 5 hours of performance as they walked around Angel Island.

Angel Island Interpretation Master Plan Plan

Task 1.3.1.c: Plan and develop self-guided interpretive content that can be used on personal devices

As I developed the second Angel Island app, Angel Island Mobile, during the fall of 2012, the California State Parks and their community development partner the Angel Island Conservancy published the Angel Island Interpretation Master Plan. click I am hoping that I can interest them in giving their blessing and branding to Angel Island Mobile, since it seems to fulfill the need for self-guided interpretive content on personal devices, planned in Task 1.3.1.c.

The Angel Island Mobile AppFocus on History of Angel Island: buildings, stories, performances

download the appstart

exploringThe Angel Island Odyssey app was adapted for Angel Island Mobile - an app built to enhance the experience of all visitors to the Angel Island park itself with “now and then” photos, videos, audio and stories that engage visitors in the history of the places as they explore the island.click The visitor downloads the app before, during or after their visit. Once downloaded, its content remains on the phone and does not have to be downloaded again. click Then the visitor can explore the island at their own pace and in their own direction. click On the island, only active GPS on the phone is needed to track the location of the user (no cellular activity is needed which is bad on AI). click Once at their destination, the visitor can look at documentation, or historic photographs to see, for example, here how many of the original buildings have become archaeological (disappeared).Our argument to the California State Parks and Angel Island Conservancy is that its potential benefits include increasing visits and especially repeat visits, and the international visibility and attraction that significantly supplements the park’s various websites even before the visit.

map2app and Cultural Heritage Places

Find How-to Tutorials at http://www.map2app.com/en/support/tutorials

Such apps as Angel Island Mobile can act as interpretive platforms for tangible, invisible, and intangible heritage, and can be created inexpensively by interpreters and stewards. Excellent examples already exist for many historic sites in Europe, and one is about to be launched for the Russian fort itself of the Fort Ross State Park. I believe the potential value and scope for the creation of such guides, not only for heritage places but also archaeological sites, is enormous.

Cultural Heritage stewards, Archaeologists and Museum Professionals can access the Map2App platform for free as authors; you can create your own categories (restaurants, parks, museums...anything you want) and you can create - or import - your places, events and stories, including media files such as images, videos and audios. The scale can be very small - a house, or very large - a whole city. It can be thematic, as with our historical focus for Angel Island Mobile.

Once the content is all set you can export it. It works like magic! You get a beautiful guide for iphone and android that is a companion for visitors as self-guided explorers, or - as with Odyssey - followers of a large group - who might get left behind..

Future Directions: Community Feedback - integrating Mukurtu Mobile

MUKURTUMobile

CoDABenefits for Angel Island Mobile App and AISP•Community

engagement•User Contribution•Enrichened metadata•Enrichened content•Digital preservation•A better app and a

better park

Community of Users

You have now heard something about Mukurtu and Mukurtu mobile, and its focus on the creation of rich media collections by communities and individuals, with filtering of access as defined by traditional knowledge or other values. The aim of Mukurtu CMS is to make it easy for the user to create metadata for their collections that will ensure reliable delivery and longterm preservation of the media (http://www.mukurtu.org/). Map2App does not do this. You have heard what Map2App does with its ease of creating mobile apps for exploring and navigating places at whatever resolution. What the Center for Digital Archaeology now proposes is to bring these two platforms together in a partnership that will expand the possibilities of both. Such a partnership will be of great benefit to the Angel Island Mobile App as well as the Angel Island State Park and its visitors:It will engage the local community and visitors, allowing them to seamlessly contribute to the points of interest, stories, and events that are exhibited on Angel Island It will enrichen the content at the same time as giving it richer metadata, leading to its long-term preservation ........In other words the benefit will be a better app and a better park

Videos of Angel Island Mobile

A short demo of Angel Island Mobile athttp://vimeo.com/62590847 (password:angel)

A fun trailer/teaser for Angel Island Mobile athttp://vimeo.com/62500787 (password: angel)

http://vimeo.com/62590847




Thank you•My CoDA Colleagues •map2app colleagues•Mukurtu colleagues•Ava Roy and the inspirational WePlayers•Amy Brees, superintendent of Angel Island

State Park•Steve Mills and Michael Ashley: the original

Remediated Places team at Çatalhöyük•and all those unknowing guinea-pig users of

the Angel Island Odyssey app