Through the Cracks
Evoking the feeling of live performance using ubiquitous devices
Evoking the feeling of live performance using ubiquitous devices.
Augmented Reality (AR) traditionally involves adding to, or embellishing objects, people and spaces.
However, these embellishments exist within the established, often discriminatory social structures of our physical world. Conversely, Through the Cracks employs AR to create new, extended spaces for storytelling and expression. Developed in collaboration with English Touring Theatre, this unconventional interpretation of AR is not a virtual space, fully detached from the physical world, it is a liminal space between spaces that can be used to communicate undervalued and overlooked stories.
Whilst Through the Cracks seeks to address established normative structures using technology, we remain mindful of the imperialistic systems that underpin much AR technology development.
Using their phone or tablets, audiences see and/or hear a virtual chasm appear on the physical floor
beneath them. Through this fault line, they watch and/or listen to a story unfold, performed by real
humans. The story is experienced from overhead as the performance appears to be happening under the
floor of the physical world. This method of presenting stories through Augmented Reality (AR) has the quality of an intimate performance rather than a piece of linear recorded media.