Join us on April 7 and 8. Register here.
In conjunction with the MIT Open Documentary Lab’s AR and Public Space Artist Collective’s exhibition, Layers of Place: MIT, this interdisciplinary panel explores how artists and communities are using augmented reality to reveal the layers of histories, stories, and perspectives of place. How does AR make the invisible visible? How can artists and communities present counter-narratives, and bring the past into dialogue with the present to imagine new futures? What unfolds when digital commentary overlays physical space and how does co-creation shift power in that process?
From the perspective of a curator, technologist, community leader, artist, and scholar, we will hear how artists and communities co-create with AR as an artistic medium and a tool of resistance to reclaim narratives of place. How can AR be used to find commonalities between communities, to bridge divides, and to see multiple perspectives? How can site-specific work move beyond? What are the limitations of an invisible medium like AR — and how might its discreet nature also open new pathways for resistance and storytelling?
Panelists:
The MIT Open Documentary Lab’s AR and Public Space Artist Collective presents Layers of Place, a multiyear exploration of how digital augmentation reshapes our understanding of space, place, and shared histories.
Through Hoverlay, a location-based mobile AR app, MIT’s landscape becomes an evolving canvas for urban annotation, bridging personal, communal, and historical experiences and revealing hidden stories and new perspectives. Hear from the artists who created the exhibit about their intent, process, and discoveries. What did they learn about digital augmentation as a tool for collective dialogue, imagination, and resistance? How do the pluralities of perspectives and layered realities complicate our relationship to place and provoke a new understanding of place and each other?
Panelists:
Symposium Schedule
📅 April 7
📅 April 8
1. XR/AI Art and Activism. Discussion on the application of XR and AI as means of artistic expression and sociopolitical/environmental activism.
2. Women, Art, Freedom. Discussion about the “Women, Life, Freedom” movement and Art and Activism, with Iranian female artists and scholars.
1. Introduction to Hoverlay with CEO Nicolas Robbe: Learn to use an AR tool Hoverlay. Create your own AR experience.
2. 3D Capture Techniques with Humble Monuments team at Garden Sites. Learn 3D Capture Techniques.
3. African Textiles & Decolonized Futures. Through collaborative pattern-making based on African textiles participants craft fabrics embodying decolonized futures and shared visions of freedom with The Fovnders Pillars team.
4. Participatory Audio based AR with Creative Technologist, Halsey Burgund. Explore “contributory audio AR” through the lens of the open-source Roundware platform and get hands-on experience placing sound objects into the physical landscape and designing geo-located audio experiences.
5. An Artivist Dance with Code. Learn and experiment with live coding in the browser, using Hydra, an open-source Live coding environment and visualization engine on the browser, as a means for artistic expression, play, performance, and activism.
6. From Paint to Pixels: Art, Audio & AR Storytelling – Moving from Personal to Collective (For Elementary to High School Students). A hands-on workshop to learn about the power of visual art, audio storytelling, and Augmented Reality (AR) as tools for personal expression and social change.
7. From Stories to Systems: Augmenting Alternative Realities Through Co-Creation & Emerging Tech (For Interdisciplinary and Creative Professionals, Technologists, Educators, Researchers, Activists). A workshop introducing the power of co-creation, system design, and emerging technologies as tools for reshaping narratives and disrupting power structures.
8. Motion Capture Demos at MIT Immersion Lab with Moving Memory AR artist, Lori Landay. Learn about motion capture.
