ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors explore our initial design ambitions for Traces—Olion and begun to reflect on how participants have responded to it. Traces was designed for use at the St Fagans National Museum of History, one of seven museums that together comprise Amgueddfa Cymru—National Museum Wales. Given difficulties with mobile and wi-fi connectivity at the St Fagans site, Traces was designed as a self-contained mobile download. Therefore, the audio material is not location-triggered but manually controlled. Traces is a unique assemblage of resources, and an attempt, quite intentionally, to unseat, unsettle and unravel. Traces should be considered a more playful and complex elision of the digital and physical than the designation ‘museum app’ most readily calls to mind. The Traces experience is constituted of myth, illusion and the navigation of fragments of story. The chapter shows how to create new languages and dialogues with audiences that arouse the senses, engage the emotions and are attuned to the environment.
