Pilot project presentations: Digital Markers: Making contingent markers with localised wireless networks

The Digital Markers prototype project developed and tested a DIY networking toolkit, featuring an active archiving platform for the recognition of local histories attached to threatened and disappeared sites used by London communities. It presents a production guide for a local wireless network hotspot, hosted in a customisable 3D-printable all-weather case for Raspberry Pi SBC ready for outdoor installation.

Crumbles Castle, an adventure playground building in Islington North London, was built by parents and children in 1970 using the cobbles of the local Beaconsfield tenement buildings known locally as ‘The Crumbles’. Having welcomed generations of children to play, it’s no longer compatible with building safety regulations so the building was returned to the council in 2019 and remained closed. ‘The Friends of Crumbles,’ a group of parents, play leaders and local residents, advocate it remain accessible as a community resource and will continue to work together with the council during its repurposing.

Global epidemic events have highlighted the urgency for marking histories: loss of access to many community sites and the toppling of the statue of the slave-trader Edward Colston in Bristol UK illustrated the need to register community interests and represent stakeholders.

Local people came into dialogue with artists/activists to co-design, co-author and collectively produce a digital marker/non-monument, containing location specific community related material for public access. Ten intergenerational workshops with over 60 participants from the youth and Friends group focused on how responses to the site could inform both the selection of representative media to be hosted and the case design customisation of their Digital Marker.

The Friends group visited Mayday Rooms, an archive resource and safe haven for social movements, experimental and marginal cultures and their histories. At a ‘Scanathon’ workshop they heard how to annotate and organise community contributed material, gathering the ‘knowhow’ for using smartphone apps and a range of scanning technology widely available.

Other workshops recorded oral histories, facilitating the youth group to register their relationship to the site and tell their adventure stories. Material accumulated over the 50-year occupancy stored in the castle was collectively captured in production of a 3D photogrammetry model of the interior. When the castle was cleared at the end of summer 2020, additional lidar scans were recorded so these adventure playground structures continue to be available as navigable spaces for the future.

Each of the workshops explored different modes of gathering text/image, voice and spatial materials. As site-recordings they provided the case study for the user manual on how to guide workshops, assemble the material generated, prepare the equipment to host the collections, customise the all-weather case and register a Digital Marker. https://digitalmarkers.net/

• https://digitalmarkers.net