18 Nov MIT OpenDocLab and IDFA DocLab Announce New 2-Year ‘Augmenting Reality’ Initiative
Cambridge, Mass. (November 18th, 2020) — At the 2020 International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, ODL Principal Investigator and Founder William Uricchio announced a new two year-long research initiative with IDFA DocLab to explore the battery of augmentation technologies and techniques used by communities, documentary makers, and artists to claim, reclaim, and reimagine their public spaces. As nations grapple with long-standing social inequities, a pandemic, and the algorithmic fracturing of society enabled by social media feeds and streaming services, public space is taking on new significance as an antidote to individuation.
Uricchio said, “As the public emerges from its pandemic-imposed hibernation and re-inhabits common spaces, we have an opportunity to celebrate our collectivity, to redefine our public spaces, and to carry on the good work of documentary through the creative use of augmentation.”
For this initiative, called Claiming our Commons: Augmenting Reality in Public Space, MIT’s Open Documentary Lab and Co-Creation Studio teams will work together with Centre Phi in Montreal and IDFA’s DocLab to develop a series of public-facing events that will help to gather as well as share research findings. Events will range from a globally-accessible online lecture series with multidisciplinary thought leaders, to convenings in Cambridge, Montreal, and Amsterdam, including presentations at IDFA 2020, 2021, and 2022. Publications of research findings will include articles in Immerse and a best practices guide.
“Given all the new AR technologies that are emerging, we thought it was important to bring people together to explore what is possible with AR and to remember that it is not about the technology but rather what you do with it that matters and who has access,” said lab director Sarah Wolozin.
From large-scale projections that draw attention to gentrification, to mobile apps that augment the meaning of statues and streets with unfamiliar stories, to location-based audio that highlights the effects of climate change, public space offers a platform for expression and transformation. This research initiative will draw on the perceptions of documentarians, artists, journalists, technologists, community leaders, sociologists, urban planners, architects, and scholars in order to chart the possibilities, challenges, and implications of augmenting public space.
At its core, Claiming our Commons: Augmenting Reality in Public Space will explore the implications of various augmentation practices for who ‘speaks’ and annotates public spaces; for a discourse that goes beyond advertising and governance to engage a new civic and public-facing ethos; and that does so in public, layering familiar spaces with new meanings. The research endeavor will chart the possibilities, promises, and challenges of a new chapter in documentary exhibition and public media more generally.