4. The Garden Visited
The Key held by the visitor to our garden (one of the many gardens forming
part of the Living Garden network which might have been entered) has started
to trigger off a series of events.
In our example, based on a sound recording of a spoken poem, the particular Key in question interacts within a garden to retrieve this sound recording from the remote database. This message now sits in temporary store within the garden visited. So how is this message heard, and where in the garden will it be relayed?
Viewers
Viewers are simply the `play-out' devices which ultimately reproduce the contents of Living Books within the grounds of any garden. These machines provide the visitor with various `views' of the contents of a Living Book. Various types of Viewer, spread over different locations in the garden, are optimised for the replay of certain types of material; rather than multimedia machines these are essentially monomedia devices, each performing a specific replay function, each dedicated to a particular medium.
On
another occasion someone else visiting the garden might find themselves
sitting under the same tree. This would not simply be a repeat of our first
Keyholder's encounter since the second visitor is in possession of a completely
different Key. A Key which represents and controls not the Love
poem but a unique message created for by another author.
In this way, the garden - through the agency of the Key - can transparently tailor the same physical space to create a unique, individual experience, even though it is a place open to everyone.
