FLIRT is a European Commission funded research project under the IT for Mobility theme. The development of digital cellular structures by the mobile communications industry has generated a genuine fusion between information space and urban territory. City location, time, day and date can all shape relationships to information sources. The tight constraints of mobile displays, juxtaposed with the spontaneity, unpredictability and transience of everyday mobility, requires a fresh approach to how this relationship might work. FLIRT investigates the potential of location-specific information, not only as an information resource, but also a medium for social interaction and play.

1. Pixel Kissing is a social experiment exploring virtual communities in real space. It uses locational proximity and data coincidence to create 'cellular nearness' between members. When members are present in the same cell, both receive a pixel kissing signal alerting them to the other's presence. But they will not know who that person is. Their imaginations will be stimulated to project onto the people around them, who they think it might be.

2. Lovetectonics is a social dating experiment using Pixel Kissing. If two people eventually do connect, a virtual earthquake is released across the network.

3. Lost Cat and Stampede are about overlaying fictional narratives on the city to create surreal relationships between actual places and a parallel virtual data landscape, attempting to blur the two worlds.

• The Lost Cat is a virtual creature that lives and roams within Helsinki's cellular network occasionally jumping onto people's mobile screens. It appears at certain places in the city at certain times and if you regularly pass those places it befriends you and even starts to follow you. But like a real cat, it's very independent and easily distracted, moving on and finding new people to love.

• Stampede is a virtual herd of reindeer that's let loose in the network. Warnings are issued when the animals begin to gather in certain places. Then without warning, they will charge across the city moving from cell to cell. They first appear on the phone as tiny forms and get progressively bigger as they move closer to your cell, when huge pixels fill the screen. If you are run over it goes black. Casualties are reported as they occur and the final (virtual) death toll is released at the end of the carnage.

FLIRT is a collaboration between Philips Research Laboratories (UK), Philips Consumer Communications (Fr), Helsinki Telephone Corporation (Fin), Infogrames Entertainment (Fr) and the Royal College of Art (UK).

Research team : Neil Clavin, Paul Farrington, Marcus Gosling, Nick Durrant, Shona Kitchen, Ben Hooker, Arita Patel, Fiona Raby, Niell Sweeny, Brendan Walker

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