Concept

The proposal is for a large LED sign that is placed on a village green somewhere in the south east of England. The LED displays messages left by people on a web site.

The sign represents an interactive site where anyone can leave messages which might range from the profound to the mundane, the instructive to the oblique and from the collective to the personal. The sign would be accessible to anyone using the site. The intention is that this would encourage the signs use as a site for communication, making it simultaneously remote and highly public. The proposal exploits the basic contradiction between the signs location in a relatively inaccessible place and its visibility anywhere in the world. The proposal exploits the ability of communication networks to facilitate remote experience - where the conceptions of place and event are dissolved as various locations are temporarily connected and information passed between them. In this sense the sign acts as a virtual version of the village green: as a meeting place and information centre.

The sign itself would have a surreal presence in its rural location. In keeping with its site the sign also has a 'character' - it is a gossip or rumour mill. The web page is an invitation to gossip or create rumours - gossip from around the world. The character of the sign takes on the format of something between the local newspaper, the village gossip, a celebrity gossip column and the conspiracy theorist. The gossip would have a global character and a public display at odds with the usually semi-secretive nature of gossip and rumour. This would add to the ambiguities of the sign's location (physically remote, virtually accessible), it's experience (personal messages, public display) and it's role (gossip monger, civic monument).

How it works

A web cam is installed on the green, facing the LED sign. Both are connected to a pc located in a place nearby (the village hall, a vacant room, etc). The web cam sends images to a web site via the pc. People clicking onto the web site can see the display on the LED. They can also type in a message of their own onto the web page. This message is then sent to the pc which converts the message into a format which can be displayed by the LED sign.

The LED will be approximatley 2m long and would be installed to be highly visible. The site will be chosen to represent as closely as possible the rural ideal of the village green. We are planning to select the village green and begin negotiations with local authorities during February - it will be somewhere in Surrey, Sussex or Kent...