Urban Cursor (image above) by Sebastian Campion is a GPS enabled Apple cursor as public furniture designed to facilitate social interaction and play in public space. The work was first shown at the Festival Ingràvid Figueres, Catalunya/Spain in September 2009.

The object…was placed on a square in Figueres…Here, people could touch it, move it around and sit on it as an alternative to the benches. Despite being removed from its normal screen based environment, the cursor was still in touch with the digital world. Via an embedded GPS device, the cursor transmitted its geographic coordinates to a website. At the website, the coordinates were mapped in Google Maps thereby documenting the cursor’s movements in the physical world and making it possible for participants to see how they collectively helped move the object around. During the festival participants could also upload photos of the cursor at the website. The photos were automatically placed on the map by matching the photos’ digital time stamp with the GPS coordinates.

The image below shows the movements of the Urban Cursor on the 23rd of September.