In this paper I discuss the multisensory digital interface and art installation Zelige Door on Golborne Road as part of the wider research project 'Mapping Memory Routes: Eliciting Culturally Diverse Collective Memories for Digital Archives'. The interface is conceived as a tool for capturing and displaying the living heritage of members of Moroccan migrant communities, shared through an artwork composed of a digital interactive sensorial map of Golborne Road (also known as Little Morocco), which includes physical objects related to various aspects of Moroccan culture, each requiring a different sense to be experienced (smell, taste, sight, hearing, touch). Augmented Reality (AR) and olfactory technologies have been used in the interface to superimpose pre-recorded video material and smells to the objects. As a result, the neighbourhood is represented as a living museum of cultural memories expressed in the form of artefacts, sensory stimulation and narratives of citizens living, working or visiting the area. Based on a model I developed for the multisensory installation 'Streets of...7 cities in 7 minutes', the interface was designed with Dr Mariza Dima (HCI designer), and Prof. Monica Bordegoni and Dr Marina Carulli (olfactory technology engineers/designers) to explore new methods able to elicit cultural Collective Memories through the use of multi-sensory technologies. The tool is also aimed at stimulating collective curatorial practices and democratise decision-making processes in urban planning and cultural heritage.
aimed at creating a multisensory experience able to craft deeper connections between
people and their ancestral cultural memories, positions itself with the wider research
field on Community Memories [
The inspiration for the interface design comes from the practise-based artistic
research I carried out over a period of 8 years for the multisensory art installation
‘Streets of...7 cities in 7 minutes’ [
During my travels I configured the concept of sensorial urbanism as a ‘navigation
mode’, a safe strategy to explore the seven cities included in the installation. The
concept takes inspiration from the critical body of work on Sensorial Urbanism
developed by architects, anthropologists and cultural historians such as Joseph Rykwert,
David Howes, and Constance Classen increasingly shifting the predominance of the
eye in urban studies towards an interdisciplinary approach embracing the whole range
of sensorial phenomena and perceptual capacities [
The evaluation report of the 2012 UK tour of ‘Streets of…7 cities in 7 minutes’
revealed a keen interest of members of the communities engaged in the parallel creative
outreach programme ‘Living Archaeology of the Place’, to see video recordings of
their Memory Sessions with the artist becoming an integral part of the installation [
As I engaged in a new phase of experimentation and project development, two main research questions started to take shape. First, how can migrant communities contribute to the creation of a globally connected ‘sensorial urbanism’ and a broader, more socially inclusive understanding of urban spaces? Second, in which ways can the design of an interactive multisensory space engage with cultural memories and which uses can we make of it to successfully sustain democratic decision making practices in urban development and heritage studies?
With regards to the research methodology, it was clear that it had to retain the ethos and practice of the Memory Session format, which had been at the core of the ‘Living Archaeology of the Place’ programme. This format aimed at facilitating dialogue across groups composed of 5-10 people with direct knowledge of the place and culture they were to collectively explore. After experiencing my sensory recollection of the place through a series of stimulations including sounds, tastes, smells, objects to touch and images to see, participants were asked to share feelings, thoughts and memories of it. The ensuing conversations focused on old traditions, everyday rituals and contemporary urban life, as well as personal notions of home and cultural identity. This process of collective recollection of the body language, sounds, movements and rituals unique to the place and culture at the centre of the creative conversation, allowed the members of the group to unearth its ancestral memories as well as map out the trajectories of ancient and contemporary migration journeys forming the unique tapestry of cross-cultural migration heritage in London.2 As remarked in the final project evaluation report, the sessions had a positive impact on the communities involved from the point of view of empowerment, intercultural exchange and cultural identity:
By using digital media and the memory sessions, ALDATERRA Projects gives a
platform and opportunity for discourse to intercultural communities to take greater
control of the representation of their own histories and cultural identities. Perhaps
the most exemplary areas in which true empowerment is captured is during the
memory sessions which were conducted by the artist with members from the
Brazilian, Chinese, Indian, Italian, Moroccan, and Portuguese communities in London.
During these sessions members of these intercultural communities were asked to
express the ways in which the installation relates to their own experience of city
life and sense of cultural identity. By doing so, the artist uses digital recording and
cyber space to create a bridge and a point of intersection where communities can
take greater control of the representation of their own histories, and in so doing,
move towards a future, which is empowered with a greater awareness of the
necessity of cultural collaboration. So naturally “Empowerment” as a theme came up
most frequently in all aspects of the qualitative research as a prominent outcome
observed and experienced by participants [
Therefore, in line with the Practice-as-Research approach of my original creative enquiry, I decided to adopt a Participatory Action Research methodology in which participants would become collaborators as well as subjects of the process of knowledge production. Workshops would be planned and facilitated to be largely community-led, and based on the principles of group consensus and agreement. More specifically, participants would undertake activities that helped them, their families and local community becoming more aware of the value of their cultural heritage and of ways of sharing it with other communities in London and beyond. They would have a personal say in what the group accomplished and the sort of tools or resources they wished to explore, so any outputs and activities would have to be customised for their local priorities and interests. Additionally, the artistic/research tool and other resources they would collaborate on would be made available to them and their community after the end of the project. 2
Design strategy and computational mechanism of the digital interface
During the planning phase of the project, it became clear the importance of ensuring a continuity with previous research activities. Al-Hasaniya Moroccan Women’s Project, is a community centre based in West London, which had been part of the ‘Living Archaeology of the Place’ programme and was keen to develop a collective methodological approach for the design of a digital interface that could support research and dissemination of the local intangible Moroccan heritage. Al-Hasaniya is an organization that has been active in West London over the past thirty years and, although mainly focused on women’s access to mainstream support and services, promotes “greater understanding among communities”3 and, as such, was well placed to facilitate contacts with other local groups. As the negative impact of gentrification and urban development on migrant communities was being discussed at public meetings and local residents associations, the risk of losing localised heritages as a result of families moving out of newly unaffordable neighbourhoods was also affecting people’s sense of belonging and emotional attachment to the place.4
The importance of supporting autonomy, identity and ownership in engaging with
communities has been highlighted in relevant literature [
(a) Design appropriate interactions that use sensory modalities extended by digital technologies in order to augment the embodied experience;
(b) Invite the related communities to curate the exhibited content in order to strengthen the connections between the communities represented in the interface and those experiencing it.5
The crucial point was to create a meaningful non-hierarchical relationship between
ourselves (artist, designers and researchers), and members of the communities in a
multi-disciplinary project involved with the hyper-local [
a) Engage people (as individuals/citizens/community members) with the process of surfacing, negotiating and reframing assumptions about “other” cultures; (b) Gain a better understanding of what tactile, gustatory, and olfactory experiences can be designed for and how they can provide space for inter-cultural exchange amongst researchers, participants and general public;
(c) Design a tool that can stimulate the production of digital records from rich participants’ input and collective insight to be archived and used for democratic practices in urban planning and heritage studies.
Our strategy for multisensory experience design was that the focus should be first on identifying and understanding the multidimensional elements of the design space (e.g. socio-cultural, aesthetic, philosophical) and then on devising appropriate strategies for designing multi-sensory modalities. For this reason, after a long selection process I involved intergenerational members of the Making Communities Work and Grow youth centre in Golborne Road in a new series of Memory Sessions aimed at exploring cultural memories of their everyday life in relation to specific cultural objects and locations in the area. Extracts of these personal narratives were then co-curated with members of the community and used in the digital interface developed with the designer team. The interface operates in conjunction with a multi-sensory map of Golborne Road, the area in West London with the highest concentration of Moroccans living in London. The aim is to represent the street as a living museum of cultural 5 This section of the paper is indebted to a conference presentation prepared in collaboration with the HCI and olfactory technology designers/engineers. See Terracciano, A., Dima, M., Carulli, M., Bordegoni, M.: “Mapping Memory Routes: a multisensory interface for sensorial urbanism and critical heritage studies”. In: CHI EA '17: Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 353-356. ACM, Denver, USA (2017). memes expressed in the form of artefacts, behaviours, smells, tastes, and narratives of citizens making up the area.
The audience physical interaction with the map takes place in direct relation with the physical objects, each requiring a different sense to be experienced and representing a different cultural meme. For example, sticks of cinnamon embody the smell of the spice used in traditional Moroccan cuisine, mainly for cakes and meat dishes, and as a traditional medicine aiding digestion. Prayer beads and a piece of fabric traditionally used in a garment called djellaba invite audiences to engage with the haptic sense to explore the meaning of such traditional cultural objects. Hidden memes embodied in the objects then resurface through gestural manipulation, as with the movement of the thumb passing through prayer beads to count religious recitations, which interestingly is common to many other cultures and religions. By picking up the objects, members of the audience are invited to engage with the geographical map and explore their own personal ancestral memories through an activation of the senses.
In addition to the manual sensorial experience assigned to each artefact, they are
invited to use the Zelige Door (a frame containing a tablet and olfactory display) and
position it on the relevant marker, which represents the object available for
interaction. This action triggers the AR video of a project participant sharing a related
narrative. As described in the conference paper presented at CHI 2017, “in addition to the
sensorial experience assigned to each artefact, there are 30 markers distributed along
the street. The markers are used by the digital interface to playback video of
Moroccan people narrating stories relevant to the specific sense. We used a commercial
tablet that runs an AR application able to trigger pre-recorded video sound material
stored in a database and readily available in AR upon positioning the tablet camera
over the marker” [
It is noteworthy that at the start of the development phase we had to take the
decision not to use AR SDK platforms such as Vuforia, which offered better solutions in
terms of 3D object recognition, API and Could upload for videos, because the
platform would automatically acquire rights on the digital content to publish. This would
have been in contrast with the ethical grounds on which the project had been
developed, which aimed to leave control on the final use of the digital outputs to the
community. Therefore we eventually opted for the open source platform ARToolKIT,
which, although less solid, did not require copyright of the digital content and was
compatible with the coding developed by the olfactory designers. Indeed, to enhance
the users’ experience and investigate the impact of smell on memory and manual
interaction, the olfactory engineers at Politecnico di Milano designed an integrated
multisensory system, consisting of a frame in which multisensory devices are
integrated to emit evocative fragrances in connection to specific markers. The olfactory
displays consist of air cannons, based on the ultrasonic atomization method for
generating fine particles of fragrances, controlled by the AR application via an Arduino
board. With regards to the design of the frame, this is based on a series of aesthetic
elements common in Moroccan architecture and material heritage, in which the
‘zelige’, as a geometric pattern, is rather common. Conceived as a door that opens on
people’s stories and memories from the place, the frame was developed using rapid
prototyping techniques, in which the various Moroccan elements are mixed together
(Fig.1). Moreover, in the front part of the frame, a “Mashrabiya” inspired pattern is
integrated with the zelige shape in a ‘Moiré effect’ (as described by the olfactory
designers), creating an evocative decoration made of small holes, which allow the
fragrances delivery [