At first, The Common Line seems to be a straightforward enough idea – but as soon as we start detailing any of its practical aspects, it branches out exponentially into a complex and open-ended process of negotiations between people, technologies and places. Our individual specialisms and approaches provide the impulses that drive the development, yet most of our ideas and actions are developed in conversation.
The practical limitations of the technologies we are using have particularly inspired this way of working as we have become focussed on geolocated augmented reality. It is exciting to come up with new ideas and applications based on what the technology can do in principle, but it is quite another matter to get things working in the field. It can be slow to iterate, and the field work uncovers practical limitations which nearly always lead to profound conceptual and aesthetic reconsiderations, but it also inspire new approaches and ideas.
Consequently, the process between concept development and implementation is dialogical rather than instructional. This puts the digital developer at the centre of a multidisciplinary team as opposed to a receiving end. Practical limitations also mean that our thinking oscillates between new technologies that we may realistically anticipate in the not so distant future (science fiction), and the need to design a satisfying experience with the ubiquitous technology at hand, arguably a widespread mindset digital culture.
Chris Hunt and Volkhardt Müller, August 2018