Vado is an audio experience developed for the bus lines of the city of Udine, for the train connections Udine-Gorizia and Gorizia-Trieste, and for the Trieste-Muggia boat service. It consists of an app which offers audio, site specific contents: stories and music activated on selected routes, and which can be listened to only while travelling, turning the journey into an unprecedented narrative experience.
Through a geolocation system, the app recognises the traveller’s position, and activates the contents according to it. Therefore, through the smartphone the travellers have access to an audio content (with music, sounds, noises, voices, stories etc.) that plunges them into an authentic story, created in accordance with the surrounding landscape.
Travelling becomes a little like going to the theatre, but instead of a stage, the whole city and its territory will open up. Through the contents created by the artists, the audio tracks in their earphones will guide the travellers in a surprising – to say the least – route suspended between reality and surreality. The space around the traveller will come to life, will populate, will deform. The passengers will become spectators and protagonists at once, while the passers-by and the landscape will turn into unconscious performers of an original act.
For the artists involved, the challenge is to create the audio contents for the travellers: different environments, landscapes and transportation means in constant evolution.
Vado intends to use smartphones as a new medium for art, thanks to a geolocation system which will make the audio contents available to the traveller exclusively along certain public transport routes, filling them with new meaning and making them richer from an experiential point of view.
Those who will travel along these routes will reach several cities of Friuli-Venezia Giulia, and discover completely different places and stories, in a journey within the journey.
Once the app is downloaded, the user can choose the route he will follow and listen to the related sound work. For each route he will find all the relevant details of the audio content: title, duration, departure point, the authors, their biographies, a brief synopsis and the credits. Thanks to a geolocation system on his smartphone, the traveller will find the sound work available only on the related transport mean and route. At this point the traveller will be invited to step on board of the selected means of transport, wear his earphones and enjoy the audio track. During the journey he will be able to visualise the track, and in case he should decide to switch to another app, the audio will stay in the background with no interruptions, except in case of an outgoing or incoming call.
Since it has been created for travellers and considering the geographical position of Friuli-Venezia Giulia, the app is multilingual, and it will be possible to choose between Italian, Slovenian a nd English.
Vado is realised by Puntozero Società Cooperativa within the project Creative Mobility, with the support of Regione Friuli-Venezia Giulia. The ideation and development are by Puntozero Società Cooperativa, with the creative consultancy of Marina Rosso, digital development by Mobile 3D srl.
The artists involved are Giovanni Chiarot and Renato Rinaldi for Line C of the urban bus in Udine, Francesca Cogni for the train route from Udine to Gorizia, Davide Vettori for the train route from Udine to Gorizia, Ludovico Peroni for the train route from Gorizia to Trieste, Carlo Zoratti and Daniele Fior for the train route from Trieste to Gorizia, Carlo Zoratti and Daniele Fior for the ferry connection from Trieste to Muggia round-trip.