Thesis Question: What is the specific question you are answering?
How can Augmented Reality be used as a medium to encourage people to participate in activism?
Context: Why has this question arisen?
Through my research, I have found that Augmented Reality can be efficiently utilized to inform people about various issues in a highly interactive way. Many people have started to use it as an educational tool as it allows users to interact with the content and have a more personalized experience. Furthermore, due to COVID, people are looking for ways to make information more accessible. AR allows people to experience the same things from different parts of the world. Moreover, with the rise of social media has come the rise of AR face filters on instagram, snapchat, tik tok, and facebook. People are using AR more and more each day. I also found that people are using social media a lot more than they used to for activism and organizing. Looking though my research, I realized there hasn't been a lot of work done in the field of AR activism on social media. So I found the common ground for AR and activism was social media which led me to develop my thesis question.
Precedents: What have other people done so far?
Kinfolk - an AR app, not through social media, a mobile app that uses AR to place digital statues of important women, people of color and LGBTQ+ icons in the real world.
Reclaiming the Monument by Dustin Klein - projected faces of people killed by police brutality onto problematic monuments
I Believe in Our City by Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya - created in response to the increase of Asian American hate crimes in NYC
Initial Ideas & Prototype
Main Idea: Creating AR art installations/pop-ups as conversation starters for people to learn about iconic moments or people from these movements. It is more to create awareness for these movements than telling people how to actively get involved. A lot of the time you have to travel to different parts of the country to see new art installations, but I wanted to create a platform that would bring the art installation to you. Each AR installation will be connected to an Instagram account that people can go to for further information about each installation.
Narrowing in:
One idea I had was to create murals of notable women from different movements, they would be placed in different areas of the city.
Another idea I had was to create pop ups of different headlines about the increase of Asian American hate crimes, when you click a headline it tells you more about what happened
Lastly, I thought of creating AR art installations of symbols from the Black Lives Matter movement.
Maybe an installation that counts down the days since the last mass shooting?
My specific goal for my project is to have atleast 10 people visit the instagram after they view they AR installation/pop-up. This will show that the AR installation/pop-up spoke to them and made them interested enough to learn more.
I also did more research on disrupting the ecosystem of social media which you can view HERE!
