Children's Magical Realism for New Spatial Interactions: AR and Archives

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Modern mobile phones allow new kinds of interaction which mix the real world and virtual worlds together. So called 'augmented reality' (AR) usually overlays digital images or 3D models on to video from phone cameras to present audiences with new kinds of mixed reality that they can explore almost as if it were real space. In recent months, some new developments from Google and Apple have pushed the technical boundaries of what mobile phones can do allowing much more complicated interactions with real space allowing us to cause digital objects to appear really rooted in the real world. Although the technical possibilities of this work are exciting there is a real danger that the experiences designers create may be led by the technology and not inspired by other kinds of creativity. If we would like to explore spaces and places in new ways we should look to other forms such as film, theatre, dance and in our case books to expand our vocabulary of space.Our project uses the work of a prominent author of children and young adults' books, David Almond to suggest new imaginative spatial interactions for AR. Almond has been describe as a magical realist author and much of his work is about confusing or ambiguous cross overs between worlds, real and imaginary, past and present, everyday or mythical. During our project we will work with specialists from our project partner, Seven Stories, the National Centre for Children's Books as target audiences and AR specialists to co-design new kinds of spatial interaction for AR and VR applications.Our project will have two main results. The first is the most straightforward: an Android and iPhone app that will be presented as part of the Great Exhibition of the North in a creative walking trail leading visitors through one of the most exciting and creative parts of the city of Newcastle upon Tyne, the Ouseburn Valley. The app will take early sketches from Almond's work, drawn from his archive in Seven Stories, and combine them with story telling elements in key locations in the valley. The second result of our project is to present our design method, the process by which we thought together with our project partners, audience participants and industry specialists, to create the work. We believe that by doing this we can allow other museums and galleries to produce new creative projects in a way that involves others. We think that this will produce better creative work and be inherently more democratic in its use of public digital space.