Macnas Digital - Scratch Project

2017

Macnas Digital was an alpha version of an augmented-reality sound mobile app, built to test the possibilities of mobile digital technologies to enhance and extend the experience of spectators of the Macnas parade and other Macnas spectacle events.

Macnas are an international spectacle and street performance company, based in Galway. The alpha project focused on sound as a means of augmenting the individual spectator’s experience of the Macnas parade ‘Port na bPúcaí’, held in Galway on the 29th of October, 2017, and the street spectacle ‘Memory Song’, held in Dublin on the 30th of October 2017 as part of the Bram Stoker Festival.

The project produced a mobile app for iPhone and Android that provided spectators with an aural soundscape for the parade, triggered manually and automatically via Bluetooth. The soundscapes focused in particular on two characters in the parade - the central character of the Mystic, who appeared towards the beginning of the parade in a boat with his dog, and the Lighthouse, which appeared at the end of the parade.

Listen to the app tracks below (remember to imagine that you are standing on the street on an autumn evening in Galway / Dublin, surrounded by an excited and wondering crowd, watching fantastical characters and images pass by!)