The Media Portrait of the Liberties is an interactive neighborhood portrait comprised of 'context-aware' stories capturing the life, lore and color of the Liberties community in Dublin, Ireland, both past and present.

The project was created by Valentina Nisi, a research assistant in the StoryNetworks group at MediaLabEurope, and PhD candidate in the Distributed Systems Group at Dublin's TrinityCollege. To realize the project, Nisi developed and produced a rich array of content coupled with a wireless interactive delivery platform so that short, historically-informed video narratives can be accessed in real-time as one walks around the Liberties neighborhood.

Nisi conducted multiple ethnographic interviews and collaborated with a local writer Mairen Johnston whose book 'Around the Banks of Pimlico' records her memories of growing up in the neighborhood. In the interactive narrative, the lives of real individuals interviewed by Nisi are woven together with historical data about the social condition of the people living in the area in past times. Narrative fragments are organized in a multi-branching structure, so that characters from different stories who share a common social network or adventure may intersect at any time, creating a unique storyline.

The project offers the contemporary community a view into the history of their neighborhood, and enables an evolving repository of stories that community members may add to as they wish, resulting in a textured, ever-changing story map of the area.

Media Portrait project web site >