Welcome to the Mobile Bristol site. If you have come here to download software and explore the new medium of mediascapes, we suggest that you follow this link to www.mscapers.com where you will find the latest mscape toolkit from the HP team that was involved in the Mobile Bristol project. You will also find a number of mediascapes to download and play on the mscapers site and an invitation to upload your own mediascapes.

If you have come here to find out more about the Mobile Bristol project that ran from November 2002 and August 2005, then feel free to browse around this site where you will find information on some of the mediascapes that were trialled and academic publications.

The Mobile Bristol Centre was a programme investigating how mobile devices and pervasive information technology can be used to enhance the ways in which residents and visitors experience and interact with their physical environment and with each other in urban and public spaces.
Imagine a digital landscape overlaying the physical world. As we walk around this landscape, we can tap into the digital sounds, sights and interactions that are positioned in the landscape and activated by our presence and actions.
The digital landscape is formed from a dynamic and overlapping set of mediascapes which are context-sensitive combinations of digital media and interactions created and deployed by various authors.
The project has created a toolkit, which provides a digital canvas over the physical landscape onto which digital experiences can be painted and new commercial opportunities can be explored.
As people walk through the physical environment, a diverse range of digital media experiences augment the ambiance and bring these spaces alive.
The project had three main threads. Each thread informs, drives and enables the others.


Infrastructure Rollout dealt with the technological issues in providing efficient, shareable and pervasive wireless access including GPRS, Wifi and DAB.

Application Framework investigated sensing devices, content authoring tools, and the underlying software architecture to create and manage multimedia experiences.

Lifestyle and Experience Design Research tested the value of these new forms of situated experiences with the people for whom they are intended. It explores new forms of interaction and the needs for lifestyle integration.

Forum (for Toolkit users)

Application Projects