Venue : The Media Centre, Northumberland Street, Huddersfield and www.speakerscorner.org.uk
Artist : Jaap de Jonge
Date : 365 days a year
Time : 24 hours a day
Price : Free


Speakers Corner is a 15 metre long interactive LED text display fixed to the outside of The Media Centre in Huddersfield. Running 14 hours a day, 365 days a year, Speakers Corner will display a wide range of content, information and news, providing entertainment and services to people using the Media Centre and the local area.

Users can interact with content on the display in three ways - by sending a text message, by using the phone booth outside The Media Centre which converts speech into text, or by adding comments from the web at www.speakerscorner.org.uk. Users comments are then archived in the database and sent to the display, building a dialogue between the street, the web and people's mobile phones.

Over the next 5 years, the media centre will be regularly commissioning new content for the interface, exploring the growing use of of mobile technology and introducing new services, such as Third Generation (3G) mobile phones, when they become available. Current content on the screen includes news feeds from Ananova, text-message poetry from local schools, and Quizoola! a text piece by Tim Etchells of Forced Entertainment.

Speakers Corner has been programmed into Evolution to profile a leading edge display and present an example of public interactivity working across formats and spaces. The interaction with Speakers Corner installation is by no means confined to Huddersfield and is available through mediums unrestricted by geography. As the first installation of its kind in the UK the installation neatly addresses some the the key questions raised throughout Evolution.



Jaap de Jonge

Based in Amsterdam, media artist Jaap de Jonge works on a wide range of projects, from interactive design to public art. His installations and kinetic objects have been shown in major museums and festivals across Europe, Japan, Australia, and South America. His work is chracterised by strong conceptual structures that are matched by a deep understanding of technology as a medium, never merely as an end itself.