AR Experience Mockup
I would love to create something that allows people to easily create and place AR versions of themselves. I initially came to this idea and as way to agitate gentrification. The thinking is that when people are priced out of a neighborhood, after the immediate concerns of finding housing and rebuilding their lives, there’s got to be a fear that everything that they did to contribute to the neighborhood would also be erased. There are memories and stories that gentrification erases forever. Even someone who dies in a neighborhood at least has the chance of being remembered as a ghost. That’s it, AR Ghosts!
If you have a a resident who has been, or is about to be, priced out, what if that person gave a walking tour of the neighborhood as it is/used to be. This would serve multiple purposes:
Celebrates the culture that exists/existed in the space before the gentrifiers
Informs conscious gentrifiers of the culture that they should learn to honor instead of replace
Serves as a “Fuck You” to gentrifiers who don’t care about the damage they do
Showing these 3 images to a classmate was somewhat helpful. They understood what was happening in each frame. They understood that the first frame was the start of an experience, but didn’t quite recognize that the street sign was being scanned to get it going. The next two frames, it was clear to them that the person in the frame of the phone was added in AR and not really on the street with the person holding the phone.
They liked the concept of taking people from neighborhoods that have been, or in danger of being gentrified and having someone native to that neighborhood sharing a narrative that captures the culture of the place as it was (before it’s replaced.).