Freetown

Augmented Reality App for Food For Your Senses Festival 2017, Luxembourg

Augmented Reality App

Welcome to Freetown is an augmented reality mobile phone application which reflects on the use of new media and interactivity by displaying the objects from a fictional, digital town. By downloading the app to your phone, you can scan the triangular markers to reveal information about the different beliefs of Freetown residents, and a selection of objects that these beliefs are represented by. Some markers also reveal a virtual button so that you can interact with the objects; simply place your finger where the marker indicates.

Welcome to Freetown is an app which takes interactivity and digital communication to its logical conclusion. Spiritual and political expression is changing ; digital witchcraft, for example, shows how people can incorporate traditional superstitious beliefs with technology despite the logical nature of the programming languages that lie beneath the emojis that are used. The democratisation that technology (and particularly the internet) allows for is taken to the extreme as you can become mayor for the day, but this equalisation is also questioned. If you are invited to burn a flag which has been created for that purpose, does it still count as a subversive act? Does 'clicktivism' really change anything? And as we become increasingly dependent on technology, are we leaving ourselves open to exploitation, with our 'freedom' just an illusion? These are questions you are asked to consider as you scan each marker in the installation and interact with the scenes they represent.