At Moving Image workshop B3 Multimedia Lab in Londen:
We want to create an interactive story/game for children (or older target groups) that is played/told through the GPS system on mobile phones. Certain locations in Manhattan with interesting looking watertowers are pinpointed and when the player enters a neighborhood he or she get’s a signal and is able to proceed with the story.
Our tagetgroup is 8-10 years of age and living in Manhattan.
Goal is to get the kids educated on the phenomenon of the watertower and the drinkwater they carry.
We like to give kids the awareness of how important water is in their lives
In animated and playful ways we want to let them enter the fantasyworld we created around the watertowers in NYC and also let them learn about the diversity of the areas in NYC, the social and cultural differences are integrated in our water tower characters we created as comic figures.
The idea is that the kids have to find the real watertowers on the rooftops in Manthattan we based our karakters on.
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Synopsis Stripy the little Watertower
Vision/philosophy
Fact: in Manhattan above the sixth floor there are over 10.000 water towers.
This wide world of watertowers on the rooftops of Manhattan is unknown to mankind. We want people, especially children, to become enthousiastic about the phenomenon of the water towers and fall in love with all their different characters as much as we did.
We’ve created the story and have writtin 6 rough scenes. We have documented lot’s of ineresting and fascinating facts about the water towers. We have a lot of sketsches and visual impressions of characters and scenes. We have also come up with a game and have lot’s of other ideas of course...
Story
Our main character Stripy, a little red and white striped water tower from Brooklyn, breaks loose in a hurricane and wakes up on the Chrysler Building. He is leaking a bit water due to storm damage. Stripy wants and needs to go home to be reconnected to his rooftop. During his journey back to Brooklyn over the Manhattan rooftops he meets all kinds of diffrerent Water Tower characters reflecting all the different cultural neighborhoods of downtown Manhattan.
Game
Title: Water you looking at?
We created a concept for a mobile and locative pervasive goal based interactive game wich uses high and low technologies such as a paper based guide and a mobile phone.
Target group is manhattan based school children between the age of 8-12 years old.
Children are involved in an enhanced physical ‘treasure hunt’ or collecting game where they are reguired to visit all the water towers on which the Stripy story is based on solving al kinds of problems that can also relate to more environmental issues evolving drink water.
Other ideas
When the world of water towers is alive in the minds of children they can contribute to this world by drawing, painting and writing their own stories about towers from say their neigborhood or towers they like
We can project animations or still images of characters on actual water towers. Creating a nightly Water Tower Parade all over Manhattan.
It can also be a competition for children. The best drawings will be projected on real easy visible water towers in Manhattan
Their can be an exhibition of paintings and drawings from children followed by an auction.