Augmented Public Space
by Íñigo Cornago Bonal
The Greek word agora means both the public square
and the meeting held in it. Activity is put on a level
with the space where it is hosted and vice versa.
Public space is closely linked to people and the
way they use it. Management, opening hours and
prohibitions or restrictions seem more important
than its form or its program. In an classic city
pattern, public space is built by a network of streets
and squares [links and nodes] complemented by
certain buildings with a cultural or social program.
The words used to refer to virtual reality on the
Internet are analogies to physical reality. In the
Beginning, words such as sites, addresses, mails
or anchors were just avatars dependant on their
physical references. However, feedback is a common
fact nowadays.
Virtual social networks is one of the phenonema
that has further developed their abilities and
also reached a wide part of the population. The
boundaries between public and private are
constantly modified. They are the meeting and
discussion place on the Internet. Although poke
friends and make comments seem actions very
close to the ones held in traditional public space,
their management and their potential use are in
a physical and temporal scale with still uncertain
limits.
For more than 15 years the term augmented reality
has been used to describe a kind of relationship
between physical and virtual reality in which the
first one acts as a support for virtual information
layers. Despite the fact that it has been related
to futuristic visions or some sci-fi aesthetics, the
widespread use of smart phones has made possible
a certain and modest understanding of augmented
reality.
In this context in which public space is understood
as the way we use it, architecture can be defined as
the use protocol of a program or the relationship
of the activities that form it. It is in the connection
between virtual and physical world where some of
the contemporary public spaces can be placed.
There is an example of feedback between both
realities trough mutual hyperlinks that shows the
appearance of this new sort of public space: the
web site icouldgothat.org that tries to implement
in street art the option to comment on graffiti the
same way as comments on posts are made on the
net.
“I Could Do That is an experimental project
where members of the public are invited to write
comments about works of street art in and around
East London. We thought, if you can post words of
praise/criticism/abuse under videos on Youtube,
why can’t you do it for graffiti? The streets belong to
everyone don’t they? Why shouldn’t everyone have
a say?”

The novelty of this initiative is that these comments

are virtual but they refer to a physical work [and
inseparable physically and conceptually from
the city]. Then, thanks to the feedback between
both realities, something unexpected happens.
Unintentionally, the street art museum is being
built. Several works that could never be within have been spotted for many and diverse reasons.
a single building [due to their condition of street A device that has brought together this kind of
art] are brought together within a structure that information on urban elements so far has been the
catalogs them, not only allowing comments on travel guide. It could be understood as a mask on
them but also relating them both virtually and the city map that hides most of it but spot certain
geographically. In this way the exhibition catalog landmarks. The user used to trust on the experience
is as broad as their users get around. It does not and knowledge of the publishing company that
depend on a foundation that maintains it or decides was paid to simplify the complexity of the city
on its contents, in a sort of cultural paternalism and tell little secrets and tricks. All sides of city
more characteristic of enlightened despotism than
of underground culture. Its perpetuity depends on
its success and its use, if it becomes not interesting
it will be abandoned. The budget is zero. Everyone
is a visitor and a curator of the exhibition [and
even an artist]. The visit takes place around the
city and generate new and unforeseen paths. Time
is fragmented and non linear. Every point is an
access to the museum and no order is imposed but
everyone is possible.

In parallel, other projects have raised hyperlinking

physical and virtual reality as for example
semapedia.org in which a place or an object of
physical reality is related to its article in wikipedia
by means of QR code [a bidimensional bar code].
The contemporary version of the commemorative
plaque. These initiatives are scattered but they
share a vision of a low tech augmented reality,
selfless initiative and collaborative nature in which
users are also the sources of the content. They are
2.0 and open source, which in the contemporary
dictionary is synonymous with free and public.

From them we can also deduce that the information

and interaction in the virtual layer mostly includes
highlighted elements from the city, although they
life are gathered: cultural centers, bohemian or
shopping neighborhoods, restaurants, nightclubs
or accommodation for different budgets. However,
this picture can be seen as an illusion made for
tourists in which most of the reviewed sites are
not part of the daily city life. Just buying your own
city guide and using it to walk the city is needed to
check the resonances and differences between the
lived city and the visited one.
If our understanding of public space is so wide to
cover almost the whole city, our intervention can just
be the network that links the various information
layers created by everyone’s experience of the city.
By hyperlinking the city components with this
network, reviewing and making comments on them
or even other ways of interaction yet to explore, we
are not just verifying and showing different readings
of the city but creating a new one.
By these means instead of simplifying the reading
of the city according to some private criteria, we are
making clear its complexity. It is a tool to access
the city from other citizens view. It is no longer
the square or an Internet forum, not even the
augmented square. We are building the augmented
city. A new layer of urban structure built by and for
citizens who generate its content, keep it alive and
change it.