Paper Boat is an AR game/interactive experience that draws the passerby’s attention to the impact of global warming and the rising sea level at the MIT campus. Using the elements of play, animation, and performance, we want to provoke dialogue and bring awareness to the impact of the climate crisis and sea level rise at MIT, which will be directly impacted by global warming and is predicted to go underwater not too far in the future. One of the main issues we face in society in this regard is that we can’t directly see what is happening around us or envision the pace of climate change in our daily lives. This audiovisual interactive AR project will visualize and bring to the surface the exceedingly fast-paced melting glaciers, rising average temperature, and other global warming data for the campus communities and visitors. We intend to collaborate with MIT climate scientists to obtain precise data.
In this interactive AR game/experience, the player will have to rescue an AR human character (silhouette man) riding on a paper boat. The game begins with a participant scanning a QR code next to specific manhole covers on campus, with virtual water coming out and occupying the space and a character and boat emerging on the surface.
To this end, the project uses the MIT manhole covers located near the Charles River and beyond, potentially any manhole cover anywhere in the world located close to sea level in areas near the seashore, as a narrative thread to visualize in real-time the rise in water levels over the next 150 years, by using augmented reality on an accessible smartphone. This work is a performative exercise in visualizing an inevitable catastrophe that is yet to come.
