Noorderzon is also an experimental field for technology. This year again we collaborate with the Groningen firm Clockwork, which has developed a wonderful Layar application for smartphones. The application – called Pulse – is an instrument by means of which online conversations, photos and location-specific information can literally be visualized. Pulse is a website, a Layar application and a smart, social search engine in one. Twitter messages from people all over the festival are used to give live, automated updates of Noorderzon, both at the locations themselves and for the people at home. Photos that are made at and around the festival are directly visualized by Pulse. The website pulse.clockwork.nl/noorderzon shows the festival programme via a map and a timeline. Subsequently, all the photos, videos and twitter messages about the festival that are submitted by visitors are collected and shown here. For this function, Clockwork makes use of self-developed smart search technology that ‘understands’ what people are referring to.

On location
Via the popular mobile application Layar, festival visitors are able to view all the locations and the reactions of the visitors via Augmented Reality. Layar makes it possible to display information that is based on what you see around you. You look through the camera of your mobile phone and, in addition to thenormal world, you also see icons that tell you more about interesting locations in the vicinity. Or, in the case of Pulse, also the reactions of others with regard to what is happening all around you. The Layar applicationis available for Android and iPhone (from 3Gs upward) mobile phones, and can be downloaded from the Marketplace of Android and from the Appstore of Apple. Noorderzon Layar can be used from the application.

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