Walking Tools is a collaborative, open-source locative media and software project led by Brett Stalbaum and developed with Angela Black, Nichol Bernardo, Micha Cárdenas, Cicero Silva, Steve Durie, Chris Head, Atom Leonhart, Todd Margolis, Jason Najarro, and Chloe Sanossian, artists and academics affiliated with the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). Developed beginning in 2007, the project operated under the walkingtools.net platform and identity, owned and maintained by Stalbaum and UCSD as an open-source initiative.

Walking Tools functioned as a loose confederation of software, artistic, and educational projects spanning multiple platforms and disciplines, with the goal of defining shared standards for creating, managing, and delivering GPS-based media content. Central to the project was the development of the Walkingtools Reference APIs, including an XML schema extending the standard GPX format to allow audio, images, and other data to be associated with geographic coordinates.

Stalbaum served as primary software architect and lead programmer, collaborating closely with Cicero Silva (now at the Federal University of Juiz de Fora, Brazil). A major outcome was HiperGps / HiperGeo, a three-part software system. The first component was mobile phone software for low-cost Java devices that guided users through GPS-triggered tours using map and compass metaphors, playing audio and displaying images at authored locations. This version was first tested during the SCANZ 2009 Raranga Tangata Artist Residency in New Plymouth, New Zealand, in collaboration with the Puke Ariki Museum Library, resulting in the Pukekura Park Demonstration / Environment and Sustainability GPS Tours.

The second component was a cross-platform desktop GUI (Mac/Windows/Linux) developed through workshops in Brazil in 2009—including the 41st Winter Festival in Diamantina, the FILE Festival in São Paulo, and later at UC Santa Barbara—that enabled non-technical users to compile images, audio, and GPS coordinates into deployable mobile tours. The third component was a server-side web application enabling users to upload, discover, download, and play location-based content. This functionality was first publicly presented during a residency at the Edith Russ Site for Media Art in Oldenburg, Germany, as part of the Landscape 2.0 exhibition (2009), supported in part by a CALIT2 Summer Internship, with Nichol Bernardo contributing design and web development and Anubhav Chopra initiating an iPhone SDK variant.

Walking Tools formed a key technical foundation for the Transborder Immigrant Tool, a public safety and activist project developed through the B.A.N.G. Lab at CALIT2 and led by Ricardo Dominguez, in which Stalbaum contributed software development and testing. Drawing on Walkingtools APIs, the project provided mobile access to water station locations along the U.S.–Mexico border and generated significant public, institutional, and media attention.

The project also played a central role in Stalbaum’s pedagogy at UCSD, particularly in VIS 40 / ICAM 40 (2009–2010), where students used HiperGps to produce self-guided locative audio tours of the campus. Supported by a manual authored by Stalbaum, Walking Tools enabled rapid introduction to locative media practices by abstracting complex programming into accessible graphical workflows and remains a core component of his educational research.

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Source: WikiEducator website.