The system is called, appropriately enough, “Hello Lamp Post” and provides a means of interacting with all kinds of street furniture around the city including trams, monuments and bollards. Getting started is simple: pick an item of street furniture with a serial code on it, send a message in this format “Hello object #code” to 0644606055 (or “Salut” if you prefer communicating in French), and then see where the conversation with the inanimate object takes you.
Creator Ben Barker in Bordeaux.
The system was developed by the UK agency Pan Studio, and creator Ben Barker was in Bordeaux to introduce local journalists and bloggers to the joys of conversing with street furniture. He explained that “it’s a fun feature that can transform a city into an environment where people can play. The street furniture was already there, the serial numbers too, we haven’t added anything.” But by tapping into those little features, people are able to access a new, smart, playable dimension to the city which didn’t previously exist.After first being rolled out in Bordeaux twin city Bristol in 2013, Hello Lamp Post has also been deployed in cities like Austin and Singapore. Ben says that “it’s been well-received everywhere, which is particularly rewarding for what is essentially an interactive urban experiment, a large-scale art installation. It is amusing to see how much people open up and confide in the objects. Usage also varies according to the surrounding culture. In Singapore, where people seem especially attached to inanimate objects, people often end up having recurring conversations with street furniture, talking to the same lamp post every day!”
But there is definitely a neat idea in there. Wouldn’t it be great if street furniture really did have tales to tell about the things that happened in the vicinity, or could share stories passed on by people who have experienced something unusual nearby, whether trivial or life-defining? That sort of interaction with our environment could actually be the future of visiting cities and recording the history of our urban environments, as experienced by the people themselves, whether they live there or are just passing through. Hello Lamp Post might just be a first step in that direction.