Tara's Diary
Augmented Reality . Speculative Design . Critical Data
Tara's Diary is an AR book telling the diaries of a 29 years old woman living in 2052. Through this illustrated book, combined with Augmented Reality, the reader engages with different aspects of her daily life which are influenced by the internet.
Story and AR: Parisa Ayati
Illustrations: Mahnaz RastgouMoghaddam
Supervisor: Manuela Naveau
Exhibited:
Ars Electronica, 2021, Linz, Austria
CYENS, 2021, Nikosia, Cyprus
“Science fiction is not about the freedom of
imagination. It's about a free imagination pinched and
howling in a vise that other people call real life.”
Bruce Sterling
Concept
During the past few decades, the internet has become an inseparable part of everyday life. It has shifted from a possibility to a must. As we move forward, and it becomes more advanced and ubiquitous, its impacts on society, politics, ecology increase so much that we cannot neglect them anymore. This project sees through the lens of a critical spectator, looking at the internet as it exists now and its infrastructure, while employing science fiction writing and design thinking techniques to speculate about the internet in the future. Trying to stay clear from a mere dystopian or utopian mindset, ideas through the book will reveal undesirable futures, or open up potential areas for improvement.
Methods:
1. Speculative Design
In speculative design, we ask ourselves: How life would be like without today's limitations in technology? It helps us to create spaces for discussions about alternative ways of technology and being. It shapes conversations around different scenarios of the future and its challenges. Respectively, it forces us to ask ourselves: what don’t we want to see? What could be harmful and what not? What we want to become? What reality do we want? And it helps us to be more prepared for the future.
2. Storytelling
“People think that stories are shaped by people. In fact, it’s the other way around.” Terry Pratchett, fantasy author We use the storytelling method to shape stories around the speculative ideas we have for the future of technology. Storytelling is a powerful tool to raise empathy and reach the audience emotionally. It helps them to connect better with the ideas. Through storytelling, we shape dialogues and scenarios around the ideas to make them discursive and procreative.
3. Design Thinking
The world of the story that characters live in should be consistent. And to do so, every object and scenario should support the rest of the ideas. To design a coherent world, design thinking, combined with the other methods, helps us to solve the problems that the character will face throughout the story. It helps to design objects in that world that are innovative and make sense with the rest of the world. Design thinking place the human first and technology second. This human-centric focus results in understanding the technologies’ potential by asking “how” and “why” people use them.
4. Augmented Reality
The character in the story uses this ability to add more layers to her diary. She uses this layer to add the things that she can’t show through the texts and still images, like motions and sounds.
The Augmented Reality was conducted with Artivive
