Revival
Revival is an mobile APP that combines with AR technology, which aimed to recreate and demonstrate the real street environment from 17th to 20th century to the residents and the potential visitors of Jacob's Island. Furthermore, to increase the relationships between people and this area.
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Jacob’s Island, a dramatic area in which it has never been a real physical island and never appeared on maps, experienced through the periods of notorious filthiness that Dickens (1838, p.417) describes, ‘dirt-besmeared walls and decaying foundations, every repulsive lineament of poverty, every loathsome indication of filth, rot, and garbage’, the flourishing Victorian era and the devastating Second World War until today, a prosperously high-class place. Compared to the former centuries, nowadays people who walk around Jacob’s Island seem to have been not paupers as in the nineteen century any more, yet the majority of pedestrians are now upper class, tourists and delicacies-seekers, and the buildings here became restaurants, business offices, pricey hotels and flats because of the lovely view of the River Thames nearby. According to this phenomenon, this paper is attempting to explain the process regarding to a creation of technology in a significantly spatial site where smartphone can illustrate a vivid historical street on the screen, structuring a space to remind the residents and indicate the visitors what Jacob’s Island really was/is, and how does its facade be transferred, turning their imagination of streets’ old scenery to a real experience. Therefore, for achieving such a goal, the technology of ‘Augmented Reality (AR) is indispensable. AR, which has been widely applying to various fields since 1990s, is an appropriate tactic to present and express above concept through designing a particular mobile application, which I named it ‘Revival’ and aimed to utilise it on the streets by setting a highly accessible condition for smartphone. This creation will produce both a space of virtual reality onto mobile screens and an augmented reality to viewers’ vision, embodying the historical streets and stories to every user, and enable them to have their own narratives and perspectives towards Jacob’s Island. The following paragraphs are going to perform the possibilities of AR within Jacob’s Island, and furthermore to explore the connection between this technology and the Michael Foucault’s theory ‘Heterotopias’.
The concept of Revival is combined with the AR technology that I aimed to manipulate them to demonstrate the environment from 17th to 20th century and the nearest decades to pedestrians who are the potential visitors of Jacob’s Island. AR allows the visitor to view the real streets in the past, and further, to interpret with their own experience within the place. Ronald T. A. (1997) states that ‘Augmented Reality (AR) is a variation of Virtual Environments (VE), or Virtual Reality as it is more commonly called. VE technologies completely immerse a user inside a synthetic environment. While immersed, the user cannot see the real world around him. In contrast, AR allows users to see the real world, with virtual objects superimposed upon or composited with the real world. Therefore, AR supplements reality, rather than completely replacing it. Ideally, it would appear to the user that the virtual and real objects coexisted in the same space’. Since AR has been invented, we can see its appearances in various fields, such as high-technological devices (i.e. ‘Google Glass’), educational books, and a great deal of video games. In addition, those objects have a mutual character, producing an interactive environment in which the users can effectively enhance their capability of memories by engaging within the situation AR formed. Moreover, it has been complementing perfectly with the remarkable developed technology for smartphone. However, nowadays smartphone is gradually becoming a necessity of normal life to modern people, and due to this, to gather a considerable amount of visitors for participating the past of Jacob’s Island is being highly achievable. There are several approaches to launch the AR-related devices or applications. The major approach is by the sensory camera, the basic component that has been generally set in every smartphone, having the capability to detect a particular object, which once has been detected the AR applications will be automatically launched. For instance, the underneath figures are captured from an introduction video for the augmented reality technology in a Ted Talks event in which the woman holds a phone (sensory device) to point at the board of trees (detected object), driving the application, and subsequently, the stage appears a vivid three dimensional tyrannosaurus on the screen roaring at the presenter which scene successfully impacted the witnesses.
The concept of Revival is combined with the AR technology that I aimed to manipulate them to demonstrate the environment from 17th to 20th century and the nearest decades to pedestrians who are the potential visitors of Jacob’s Island. AR allows the visitor to view the real streets in the past, and further, to interpret with their own experience within the place. Ronald T. A. (1997) states that ‘Augmented Reality (AR) is a variation of Virtual Environments (VE), or Virtual Reality as it is more commonly called. VE technologies completely immerse a user inside a synthetic environment. While immersed, the user cannot see the real world around him. In contrast, AR allows users to see the real world, with virtual objects superimposed upon or composited with the real world. Therefore, AR supplements reality, rather than completely replacing it. Ideally, it would appear to the user that the virtual and real objects coexisted in the same space’. Since AR has been invented, we can see its appearances in various fields, such as high-technological devices (i.e. ‘Google Glass’), educational books, and a great deal of video games. In addition, those objects have a mutual character, producing an interactive environment in which the users can effectively enhance their capability of memories by engaging within the situation AR formed. Moreover, it has been complementing perfectly with the remarkable developed technology for smartphone. However, nowadays smartphone is gradually becoming a necessity of normal life to modern people, and due to this, to gather a considerable amount of visitors for participating the past of Jacob’s Island is being highly achievable. There are several approaches to launch the AR-related devices or applications. The major approach is by the sensory camera, the basic component that has been generally set in every smartphone, having the capability to detect a particular object, which once has been detected the AR applications will be automatically launched. For instance, the underneath figures are captured from an introduction video for the augmented reality technology in a Ted Talks event in which the woman holds a phone (sensory device) to point at the board of trees (detected object), driving the application, and subsequently, the stage appears a vivid three dimensional tyrannosaurus on the screen roaring at the presenter which scene successfully impacted the witnesses.
