A mobile experience can be characterized as an intersection point in everyday life that is mediated through a device such as a PDA or a cell phone. This intersection is where real and virtual realities collide and become an experience. We make business decisions and exchange stories with friends over cellular infrastructures. Most of us are communicating in public spaces like walking through a mall or on the street. In some cases the mediated presence (talking on the cell phone) is the stand in for our real attendance. We are becoming skilled performers at weaving together the hybridization of real and virtual realities. These new conditions are changing the way we interact as humans and the design of tangible interfaces. Incorporating elements of performance as a design tool is a start to define the theoretical framework for modeling this new world. This essay examines the findings of a collaborative project between architect, Tristan d'Estrée Sterk and artist, Vicki Moulder called Performing Ada Lovelace. This project explored the use of performance as a design tool for understanding how the artist can weave together aspects of a character through a device. The performance narrative is directly inspired by Ada Lovelace's translation of the Italian mathematician Luigi Menabrea's memoir on Charles Babbage's proposed machine, the Analytical Engine between 1842-1843. In this article Ada appended a set of notes detailing a plan for calculating Bernoulli numbers with the Engine. Historians now recognize this plan as the world's first computer program. Ada Lovelace At the Science Museum in London, UK a daily programme of drama performances are organized for people to meet historical characters like Ada Lovelace and learn about their scientific contributions. In this way, performance provides a framework for an audience to make inquiries into a historical event. Performing critical ethnography allows us to re-enact a cultural situation to gain a greater understanding of the 'meaning' and underlining 'motivations' inherent to the phenomena. For example imagine the Science Museum's Ada Lovelace performing an unedited version of her life. Along with her contributions to science, historians claim she was a metaphysician, home schooled, had a cat named Mrs. Puff and was bled to death by physicals at the age of 36yrs. We would see that her life experience was far more complex then her contributions to science. In this way, critical ethnography allows us to look at the emic and etic worldview and see into the hidden power imbalances and types of oppression experienced.1 Traditionally, performance art utilizes many media relating to public spectacle, theatre and dance, and is characterized by being executed by a fine artist and reflects fine art preoccupations.2 Contemporary performance art combines drama and critical ethnography to engage communities for further dialogue. 3 It is in this context performing Ada Lovelace became an art piece questioning; how can we suspend the physical state between virtual and real experience to reflect on impacts? Does the use of a device become the mediator in this transition? To explore these questions, Tristan d'Estrée Sterk designed a simple responsive device that was light sensitive. He wanted to produce a very elegant way to focus our attention on the difference between space, place and time. He presented the idea of a small independent circuit that if exposed to a flash of light could turn an LED on and let it fade out over a defined period of time. All one hundred independent units were embedded into the 19th century like wedding gown and appeared as jewels. While performing Ada Lovelace, I laid still imagining her final hours, reading the narrative adapted from Note G - Ada's states 'The Analytical Engine has no pretensions whatever to originate anything. It can do whatever we know how to order it to perform.' On specific cues Tristan's camera flash would trigger all of the devices in the costume to glow - then fade. The room would fade to black leaving the illumination to clearly define the intersection between the narrative, the device and visual imprint. In conclusion, what remains of the performance is the photographs, 100 devices, and the audio recording of the event. What we discovered is that the documentation enable us to analyze the meaning. While we have always had physical mobility - existential mobility is now shaping our interactions without a trace. As Mou Sen, Artistic Director of the Beijing-based Xi Ju Che Jian (Garage Theatre) explains 'Theatre can help people learn how to handle their obstacles, trying to overcome them while knowing they will never get completely rid of them.'4 In other words, performance allows us the framework to document the evidence of transition between the physical and existential realities, which is the fundamental basis of mobility. 1. p.538 Madison acknowledges that critical ethnography is premised upon the assumption that culture can produce a false consciousness in which power and oppression become taken-for-granted 'realities' or ideologies. 2. This book Performance Live Art 1909 to Present, by RoseLee Goldberg is a survey of performance art from the Futurist movement to the 1970's including artists like Laurie Anderson and Adrian Piper. 3. p. 20 Denzin refers to Suzanne Lacy 1995 remark on the state of the new genre of public art. 4. In Note G, Sketch of The Analytical Engine, Ada predicts the theoretical trajectory for computer science itself and the next century of exploration, with many of her questions still unanswered. References [1] Performance Ada Lovelace Documentation www.sfu.ca/~vmoulder [2] China's Theatre of Dissent: A Conversation with Mou Sen and Wu Wenguang Asian Threatre Journal, Vol. 13, NO.2 (Autumn, 1996) pp. 218- 228 [3] D. Soyini Madison, Critical Ethnography: Method, Ethics, and Performance, 2005 Sage Publications Inc, p. 247 [4] RoseLee Goldberg, Performance Live Art 1909 to present, Thames and Hudson, 1979 [5] L. F. MENABREA, Officer of the Military Engineers, Sketch of The Analytical Engine, Invented by Charles Babbage, Bibliothèque Universelle de Genève, October, 1842, No. 82 With notes upon the Memoir by the Translator, Ada Augusta, Countess of Lovelace. [6] Norman Kent Denzin, Performing Ethnography, Published 2003, Sage Publications Inc Vicki Moulder, MA Candidate Post Tradition Media Lab, Member School of Interactive Arts and Technology (SIAT) vmoulder@sfu.ca