Ghost Listener was a team submission made at the Hackfest at the TVX ’14: ACM International Conference on Interactive Experiences for TV and Online Video.  In an interesting anthropological experiment, the system we developed allowed only the selective capture of an audio stream through various channels, requiring the end user, or recipient, of any portion of the audio stream to work with others to understand exactly what was being broadcast.  Cooperation become a necessity for understanding and a lack thereof resulted in the entire group being disadvantaged.

Using a bespoke audio controller users can selectively ‘tune in’ to the individual characters in the scene; in this case, they’re based on the ghosts from Pacman. As a result of the cacophonic audio, single-users are unlikely to be able to understand what is happening in the scene, but as multiple users share the viewing experience – something like the ‘cocktail party effect’ takes place and – by working together – they might be able to work out what on earth is happening!

A second screen device can allow us to explore content rather than just consume it. By broadcasting more content than can actually be watched by any one viewer at any one time, that viewer naturally misses out. In our example we let the viewer decide which piece of content they catch, the viewer must then talk to other viewers to piece together what happened in the production. In this way we hope to explore how we can encourage new forms of social engagement around video.