Urban Tales Visible With Augmented Reality: A Street Exhibition in Campanhã (Porto)

Introduction

Human beings are, by its inherent biological drive, a social being. It wants to connect, to dialogue, to communicate its thoughts, afflictions and desires. Current digital technologies came to offer a boost to such pursuit, and the demand satisfied such requirements. So, even in a pandemic situation where one would be restrained into its home walled confinement, existing digital social networks gave permission for such autopoietic lively communicative desire, and most of all, the desire to know. Information runs wild, and it’s there for the taking, in search for the wishful comprehension of it. Therefore, due, but not only, to the pandemic and consequential lockdowns, society was confronted with the transformation of social relations status quo and everyday routines, and escapades (tourism wise).

To understand how we possibly evolve from this experience, past and present History (knowledge) comes into fruition, and its importance becomes paramount. An alternative way of information availability and relation gives ground to experience new ways of information consciousness, of true and unbiased knowledge about anything, for instance, as it’s the topic nowadays, about pandemic news and social rights in this context, or some way to augment society search of purpose and consciousness through current and future technology. Such is the case of Augmented Reality (AR), and how information it’s exhibited to the public, as an enhanced perspective of the real physical world. AR brings an undisclosed dimension of reality, through the use of digital visual elements, or other sensory stimuli by technologic means. In this, other information would become present in our reality, as past histories meet the present, building a more informative embodied space-time dimension. The author will describe an example of how, in the context of an urban exhibition of a community’s social stories - an exhibition in the space of a demolished neighbourhood of Campanhã, Porto, Portugal (see Figure 1.) -, AR offers an unveiled space of information, and socially relate people, through everyday life’s stories, in a safe and social distant manner in a pandemic context. All this context in a smart city environment (Casado-Aranda, 2021), can be seen this way, where an advanced technological development in AR may be a solution, and produce a social space where before there was none, remembering Lefebvre (1991)Production of Space, and Foucault’s (1984)Heterotopias.

Figure 1.

S. Vicente de Paulo seen from above

Source: image taken from Google Maps

As a viewpoint, Augmented Reality can be considered a type of digital nature transforming into a mediator of worlds, increasing the perception of this reality, of its environment in real time, within the medium that surrounds us. AR permeates smartphone technology in conjunction with camera, video, and positioning system, with visual information superimposed, into seen and felt stimuli of the place’s reality where we participate as social beings. With AR it’s offered a see-through information in radiographic surfaces of reality, where reality assume a degree of transparency. Since 1985 the access to goggles and gloves, that interact with virtual reality, established a gateway to an experience of our senses that would go beyond our imagination. We literally were linked to a world that could be seen with the aid of special glasses (eg, Google Glass, Facebook Oculus VR, Microsoft HoloLens). With promise of design creativity, several technological companies (eg, Garmin, Atheer Labs, Space Glasses, Ydreams, Total Immersion, Metaio, Layar) invested in new instruments and applications that would mediate and serve the frontier between the real world and the digital information world.