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Prototype for an augmented reality experience at Duke. Image credit: Victoria Szabo
Prototype for an augmented reality experience at Duke. Image credit: Victoria Szabo

Augmenting Urban Experiences

Project Lead(s): Victoria Szabo

2014present

This project focuses on the conceptual framework and processes of digital city-making itself, drawing upon Technology Studies and Media Theory as well as historical documents, monuments, architecture, and other cultural artifacts. Researchers in this team are focused on the development of digital and mixed-reality experiences as tools for discovery and research presentation and exhibition. We focus on annotated digital maps, 3D modeling, augmented reality overlays, audio and video supplements, procedural narrations, data visualizations, and network flow diagrams in order to understand both the past of a city and its presence or effects in contemporary experiences of it. In close connection with partners in the international Visualizing Cities consortium, and with collaborative projects running in Durham, NC; Venice; Bremen; and Providence, RI, we are developing a mobile app framework for on-site exploratory and interactive experiences. The project goals are both to create multimodal research products that take advantage of the affordances of both analog and digital media forms, and to develop guidelines for an emerging genre for research presentation and transformative, affective experiences in real time and space. This approach includes abstracting principles from collaborative projects like the Digital Durham website and interactive exhibitions on-site in the city; the NC Jukebox exploration of NC folk music in the context of early 20th century North Carolina; the Visualizing Lovecraft project, which focuses on spatialized and exploratory forms of literary criticism and interpretation; Ghett/App, which focuses on the historical and architectural experience of the Venetian Ghetto; and augmented experiences in Mapping Occupied Krakow.