Innovation

A haunting audio tour of the city's sobering past is inhabiting the streets this summer. All you need is a cell phone to conjure the activities that took place in the shadows of 19th century Pittsburgh through a unique project called Public Record.

These were the days before plumbing, when Oliver Avenue was better known as Virgin Alley and homeless drunks raged poetic rants in the streets. Freelance writer Justin Hopper has created a multimedia art project woven from the lives of murderers such as William Kelly who stabbed another drunk at the intersection of Fifth and Sixth avenues downtown.

The technological twist is you can listen to the story as you cross the very street where it took place.

"This is a way of haunting the city itself with its own world," explains Hopper, who also staged a visual component on the show this month on Liberty Avenue as an Old and New Media Artist-in-residence with Deeplocal and Encyclopedia Destructica.

Hopper "trolled miles of microfilm" for 19th century newspaper accounts depicting a mix of crimes and locations. A group of Pittsburgh artists bring the recordings to life. The iPhone app, created with the help of Deeplocal, gives users a map of downtown. A red X marks the spot where a crime occurred. As participants cross a crime scene, the X turns green and the voices tell the story.

"The important thing is these are all spatially located," says Hopper. "When you go to these spaces, there's nothing left there from that time period. All that's left is the story. In a weird, eccentric way, these actions are still there, occurring in some kind of ghost world."

For the maximum atmospheric value, experience Public Record with mobile in hand, says Hopper. Download the app and walk the streets, preferably at night. On a standard text-message enabled cell, or MP3, download the map online. The project itself will be available in perpetuity.

A book version will be out in September, he adds. Public Record was supported by the Sprout Fund.

Writer: Deb Smit

Source: Justin Hopper, Public Record

Image of Lisa Toboz's "Flowers From the Country" illustrating "Dawn in a Big City part 4" courtesy of Public Record.