The project

"Lucky Stories" was a part of the "Musikhjälpen" event taking place in Gustav Adolfs Torg, Malmö, 13-19 December 2008. It was a project of the course "mass media" of the interaction design master program from the School of Arts and Communication (K3), Malmö University. It was a collaboration between our school and Good World, the organizers for all the events surrounding the "Musikhjälpen".

The idea

The main focus of „Lucky Stories“ was to create positive awareness of refugees by making the listeners  reflect on what all of us have in common: the feeling of being lucky. Even in the most difficult situations there are things that people can feel lucky about.

We collected a series of stories to prove that – and people could come listen to them, either in the Gustav Adolfs Torg in Malmö (in the organizers’ tent), or here, on this website. We started with only refugee stories, and then, during the event, we invited everyone to share their lucky stories.

The installation in Gustaf Adolfs Torg can be called a sound sculpture prototype for a public space. It is not a final version, but more of an experiment of how people's voices could be manifested in a city and create an ever-changing "sculpture with sound".

How it works

To give people the opportunity tell their story, we created a SkypeIn account with a Swedish phone number attached to it. People could either call the number ( +46 (0)406928290) or call via Skype ( lucky.stories) . Their message was recorded as a usual Skype voice message and then a software running in the background turned it into an mp3 file.
We then took the mp3 files and uploaded them to the website and into our installation, for people to listen. For the prototype of "Lucky Stories" this handling of the music files was done manually, but in a more advanced version the process could be more automated.
Another possibility was for people to send a music file straight to our email address lucky.people.stories@gmail.com . This was more of a quick solution - normally uploading music files would be done through the website.

Design decisions

SHAPE
We decided on using three pipes with built-in speakers as our physical exhibit for Lucky Stories.
Initially we were considering a wall shape, to give a feeling of 'listening from the other side of the wall'. We had some good feedback on this idea, and it was a hard decision choosing between the wall and the pipes.
In the end, we thought the wall would be more of a monument, which would create less intimacy and less physical interaction with the people listening.
We decided to have the exhibit as the three round pipes. They were easier to build and carry, and this made sense, since this was just an experiment, not the final solution.

More importantly, while listening to the stories people almost have to hug the pipes and this creates a feeling of intimacy. Also, the shape of the pipes could be associated with a real person. You feel more like there is somebody telling you his story and not just some speaker just playing mp3s for everybody. We wanted to experiment with these qualities.

As we said above, the shape we chose was just an experiment. If this were to be a permanent exhibit in a public space, many other shapes should be considered as well before making a final decision.

GREEN
We wanted to give the pipes a color that was not associated with either Christmas or refugees. For us it was important that the color we pick create the same feeling the stories were supposed to create. We chose three shades of light green, the color of hope and luck. The glossy green was visually appealing and drew attention towards the pipes.

DIFFERENT HEIGHTS
The pipes were three different heights due to the difference in size between people. We wanted to give everybody the chance to listen, regardless of age or height.

Findings

Here are some of our learnings from this experiment:

The stories

The response to the refugee stories was positive, as was the response to the idea of showing the lucky side of things. We got comments like: "That's a great idea", "It certainly does have an emotional impact! I’m lucky that I didn’t go through that", "For me, it strengthened the idea of the event. You really know it’s real!"

However, our attempt to combine refugee stories with everyone else's stories did not work out so well. When telling people about the concept and then asking them to contribute with their own stories, we got answers like: “I can't compare my story to real refugees’ stories”, “I feel guilty”, “I would just sound stupid”

The only way it was possible to get 'regular' lucky stories from people (people simply telling why they felt lucky) was by interviewing them, without mentioning the word 'refugee' in the conversation.

Sound quality

The reverb of the pipes made for a bad sound quality coming out of them. This was made even worse by the loud music playing in the tent (the location of our installation). It took a big effort to actually understand and follow the stories, which of course had a big impact on people's experience. Much more attention to the sound itself should be given in the future.

On the positive side, the "ear-holes" idea, which was a sifnificant part of the concept, worked as intended: from a distance, only a slight sound could be heard from the pipes, but only by holding one's ear to the holes, could the story be heard in full volume (overriding even the loud music in the tent to some degree).

Communicating the concept

The installation on its own was not enough to communicate the concept, and just a few were curious enough to go and listen (we had hoped for a much higher curiosity).

The poster we put up on the tubes said ”Give us a lucky story”, while the main concept was ”Refugees can also be lucky”. We should have first said what the project was about and the ’Give us a story’ message should have come second. A comment we got sums it up best: “Oh, is that what the project is about? Ok, now I get it!”

Calling a number to leave a message

This is maybe our most interesting learning. Virtually none of the people who knew about the project (except for Ehsan, who was a big supporter and was also giving us free publicity) called the number we had provided to record their lucky story. This includes people whom we had talked to personally and had great stories, and people involved themselves with refugees projects who were very excited about the project and had promissed to call.

Here are some possible explanations for that:

  • People needed a clear, tangible outcome for the effort of calling (either to themselves or to a cause). “Why should I?” one person said. One possible gratification we thought about later was having a company promissing to donate a certain amount to the refugee cause if a certain number of stories are collected (a model that has been used successfully in other projects on the web).
  • Some people don’t want to be the center of attention "I don't want to stand out"
  • Some people are not comfortable with their own voice. "I can mail, if you want. I don’t want the sound of my voice there"
  • Some people don't like answering machines
  • Own voice is something very personal, very raw (‘naked’) – it may just be uncomfortable to make it public. A different way of expressing one's self (artistically, for example) might be more successful.

Future possibilities

The main future direction we see for the project would be a permanent public sculpture in sound.

If the content were to be kept 'lucky stories', it would definetely have to go one of the two directions: either refugees stories all the way, or all kinds of stories all the way.

Of course, the content could be virtually anything. Jokes, news, random recordings from the city space, famous quotes are just a few ideas. We invite you to come up with others.

The approach for collecting the sounds would have to be changed somehow. The 'call in and leave a message' approach may work with bigger incentives for calling, or may not work at all. Other approaches could be used as well: people sending text and recording a narrator (or public figures) reading them, recording sounds automatically, without the need for people to actively participate, allowing people to express themselves in a more creative way or somehow getting rid of the 'nakedness' of people's voice we talked about above.

Whatever direction a future project might take, we hope it could keep this essence: sound installation in a public space, changing over time (based on some kind of collective input), evolving together with the city and its people.