Walking the [Augmented City] - Corina Thomas

CORINA THOMAS

WALKING THE [AUGMENTED] CITY Memory, place and mixed reality in Bromley Corina Thomas

RCA MA Architecture 2017 Tutor: Josie Kane

9188 words

With thanks to Joe Kerr and Josie Kane for their help,

encouragement and inspiration; and Amir Afshar, whose dissertation laid much of the groundwork for this study.

CONTENTS List of Illustrations

6

Preface

13

The Augmented Flâneur

14

Method

22

Dérive #1 - Un-augmented

25

Virtual Palimpsest

35

Derive #2 - Pokémon GO

37

Pokémon Going

47

Derive #3 - Geocaching

51

Searching the City

60

Derive #4 - Ingress

63

Battlefield City

71

The Future of the Dérive

75

Reflection on the Walks

80

Glossary

82

Bibliography

84

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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Fig. 1: ‘The Naked City’ drawing by Guy Debord in Psychogeographic Guide To Paris, 1957.

<https://paulwalshphotographyblog.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/debo_009_05_01.jpg>

Fig. 2: ‘Rue Halévy, vue d’un sixième étage’ by Gustave Caillebotte, 1878. <https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gustave_Caillebotte_-_Rue_Hal%C3%A9vy,_ vue_d%27un_sixi%C3%A8me_%C3%A9tage.jpg>

Fig. 3: Illustration by Honoré Daumier for ‘Psychologie du Flâneur’ by Louis Huart, 1841.

<https://mlgroves.com/baudelaire-a-portrait-of-a-flaneur/>

Fig. 4: Urban explorer on top of the Brooklyn Bridge, photograph by James Lanning

<http://cdn1.theweek.co.uk/sites/theweek/files/2015/07/150727-jameslanning.jpg>

Fig. 5: Demonstration of Microsoft Hololens headset <https://www.digitaltrends.com/wearables/microsoft-holographic-and-microsoft-hololensnews/>

Fig. 6: Person holding up Pokémon GO capture screen <https://blog-cdn.duitpintar.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/ akrales_160714_1141_A_0175.0.0.jpg>

Fig. 7: Pokémon GO crowd in Tin Shu Wai, Hong Kong <http://cdn.newsapi.com.au/image/v1/328ff1b5885300d705fe2f2656299a9b?width=1024>

Fig. 8: Map of Greater London showing Bromley Author’s own image

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Walking the [Augmented] City

Fig. 9: Map showing route taken on Dérive #1 Author’s own image

Fig. 10: Photograph from south end of Bromley High Street Author’s own image

Fig. 11: Photograph taken in suspended walkway over the dual carriageway Author’s own image

Fig. 12: Photograph of Saturday market on the pedestrianised high street Author’s own image

Fig. 13: Photograph of ‘Bromley Zoo’ mural by Bruce Williams Author’s own image

Fig. 14: Photograph of Pink apartment building on Ringer’s Road Author’s own image

Fig. 15: Photograph of Bromley Town Hall, Tweedy Road Author’s own image

Fig. 16: Photograph of backs of shop buildings on Tetty Way Author’s own image

Fig.17: Photograph of elephone Exchange Building, Edison Road Author’s own image

Fig. 18: Photograph of the Old Palace in Bromley Civic Centre Author’s own image

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Fig. 19: Example of Museum of London Streetmuseum AR app

<https://petapixel.com/2010/05/24/museum-of-london-releases-augmented-reality-app-forhistorical-photos/>

Fig. 20: Promotional image for Google Lens

<https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/google-lens-your-search-experience-going-completelyevolve-dutton>

Fig. 21: Map showing route taken on Dérive #2 Author’s own image

Fig. 22: Photograph of Churchill Theatre/Bromley Library Author’s own image

Fig. 23: Photograph taken behind Churchill Theatre/Bromley Library Author’s own image

Fig. 24: Screenshot of Pokémon GO map screen Author’s own image

Fig. 25: Screenshot from Pokémon GO showing bike racks Author’s own image

Fig. 26: Photograph of bike racks Author’s own image

Fig. 27: Screenshot of Pokémon GO showing Nearby screen and Beehive icon

Author’s own image

Fig. 28: Photograph of Beehive historic object Author’s own image

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Walking the [Augmented] City

Fig. 29: Photograph of people walking past Churchill Theatre Author’s own image

Fig. 30: Photographs of signage and maps within Bromley Author’s own image

Fig. 31: 1000 people turn up for a Pokémon GO walk in Sydney <https://edge.alluremedia.com.au/m/k/2016/06/32.jpg>

Fig. 32: Sign for First Baptist Church, Roanoke, West Virginia, US

<http://images.guff.com/gallery/image//pokemon-go-popularity-viral-real-life-jesus>

Fig. 33: Still from video for ‘Are You Lost In The World Like Me? by Moby <https://cdn.thenewstack.io/media/2016/10/Screenshot-from-Moby-video-Pokemon-GoAre-You-Lost-In-The-World-Like-Me.png>

Fig. 34: Map showing route taken on Dérive #3 Author’s own image

Fig.35: Photograph of Bromley College seen from the College Green Author’s own image

Fig. 36: Photograph of new restaurant quarter at The Glades shopping centre Author’s own image

Fig. 37: Screenshot of Geocaching showing GPS map and compass Author’s own image

Fig. 38: Screenshot of Geocaching showing cache information page Author’s own image

Fig. 39: Photograph of Insect Hotel at Bromley College Green Author’s own image

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Fig. 40: Screenshot of my Geocaching ‘Find’ report Author’s own image

Fig. 41: Photograph of Charles Darwin mural by Bruce Williams Author’s own image

Fig. 42: Photograph of nano cache with log book inside Author’s own image

Fig. 43: Map showing route taken on Dérive #4 Author’s own image

Fig. 44: Photograph of the Old Orpington Priory Author’s own image

Fig. 45: Screenshot of Ingress map screen Author’s own image

Fig. 46: Photograph of Orpington Priory and Gardens Author’s own image

Fig. 47: Photograph of Orpington Millenium Rock Author’s own image

Fig. 48: ‘A Line Made by Walking’ - Richard Long

<http://www.richardlong.org/Sculptures/2011sculptures/linewalking.html>

Fig. 49: Screenshot of Ingress map showing recently created fields Author’s own image

Fig.50: Screenshot of Ingress Intel world map showing long links <https://www.ingress.com/intel>

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Fig. 51: Still from Ingress Trailer showing monuments as portals <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92rYjlxqypM>

Fig. 52: Drawings of navigational tools by Kevin Lynch

Lynch, Kevin, The Image of the City, First Edition edition (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1960)

Fig. 53: The Passage Jouffroy in Paris

<http://modernity.io/wp-content/uploads/sites/30/2015/05/paris_1800_wrought_iron4.jpg>

Fig. 54: Scene from Hyperreality by Keiichi Matsuda <https://vimeo.com/166807261>

Fig. 55: Iron Man using augmented reality

<https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/fa/94/c8/fa94c897d7a63f1632542277ffa58e13-man-movies-iron-man-movie.jpg>

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PREFACE Augment (verb) - make (something) greater by adding to it; increase.

This study has two beginnings.

One is in 2014, when I first heard of ‘augmented reality.’ A housemate studying

computer engineering had introduced me to an iPhone app called Aurasma.

With it, he took a photo of the poster on the wall, and selected an animation to play over it. Scanning the poster again brought up the animation, perfectly superimposed, but only on that spot. This basic demonstration lit a spark somewhere in my mind. What would historical monuments become, if we

could scan them and bring up video footage of the event they commemorate?

Might our cities become conflict zones of individual experiences fighting to be interpreted as visual truth? Could we subscribe to each other’s views of reality, as we do on Twitter or Instagram?

The second beginning is in July 2016, when a smartphone game that started life as an April Fool’s joke took over the world. Pokémon GO allowed players

to use GPS to locate and capture virtual creatures as they appear in real-world locations. Crowds followed the game round their cities, and the number of players grew massively, popularising location-based and augmented reality

technology. As the game impacted spaces in cities, a number of people started to speculate on what this meant. Perhaps we were seeing a new incarnation of a popular figure: the urban wanderer or stroller; the flâneur.

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Fig. 1: ‘The Naked City’ - an alternative mapping of Paris by Guy Debord

Fig. 2: ‘Rue Halévy, vue d’un sixième étage’ by Gustave Caillebotte, 1878

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THE URBAN WANDERER Only by walking can I really see people and their cities... My walks in the cities that become my temporary homes are the one thing that bridges the distance between

myself and the immensity of the world we inhabit. When confronted with why I

rather walk thirty minutes than pay a few dollars for public transport, I only have this one certainty: If I didn’t, I would be forever adrift.1

The image of the urban wanderer has its origins in Baudelaire’s figure of the

flâneur, the 19th Century gentleman2 who walks aimlessly, taking in sights, smells and sounds.3 This figure is both part of the multitude and a detached

observer of it, and emerged during the rapid transformation of the cities of London and Paris. Through industrialisation, both cities had expanded to be beyond comprehension as a single entity, forming an urban jungle that 1 Rios, Lorena. ‘A Good Wander Unveils the Wonder of a City’: Readers on Urban Walking’, The Guardian, 6 August 2016, section Cities <https://www.theguardian.com/ cities/2016/aug/06/a-good-wander-unveils-the-wonder-of-a-city-readers-on-urbanwalking?platform=hootsuite> [accessed 17 February 2017] 2 The flaneur was almost exclusively a male figure, since women lacked the same freedom to walk alone at the time. For a strong analysis see Elkin, Lauren, Flaneuse: Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice and London (London: Chatto & Windus, 2016).

3 Baudelaire, Charles-Pierre, ‘The Painter of Modern Life’, (New York: Da Capo Press, 1964) page 4. Originally published in Le Figaro, 1863.

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surrounded and alienated their inhabitants. Thus, the walker became an urban explorer. Merlin Coverley describes the flâneur as ‘a nostalgic figure

symbolising not only the birth of the modern city but also the destruction of his former home.’4 When Baron Haussman destroyed the Arcades to build

the wide boulevards of modern Paris, this detached stroller was forced to engage in the struggle to define the city for himself.

Thus, urban wandering became less a poetic

act and more a political one. This led the 1960s group Situationist International (SI)

to develop the idea of the dérive, ‘literally translated as ‘drift or ‘drifting.’ SI founding

member Guy Debord described the dérive as ‘a mode of experimental behaviour linked to

the conditions of urban society: a technique of rapid passage through varied ambiances’.5

This typically took the form of ‘an unplanned

walk through a city, undertaken alone or

in small groups with the aim of studying

the specific effects of the geographical environment (whether consciously organized Fig. 3: Illustration by Honoré Daumier for ‘Psychologie du Flâneur’ by Louis Huart, 1841.

The flâneur is usually depicted as a dapper gentleman observing the masses.

or not) on the emotions and behaviour of individuals.’6 This practice attempted to

establish psychogeography - the combination of psychology and geography - within the

context of earlier explorations of the city as a means of transforming urban life.

4 Coverley, Merlin, Psychogeography (Harpenden, 2010) page 20 5 Debord, Guy, ‘Theory of the Dérive’, Les Lèvres Nues #9, 1956 6 Ibid.

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Coverley writes that walking is seen as

contrary to the spirit of the modern city because it allows people to challenge official representations by seeking out forgotten spaces.7 Presently, walking is one

of the few human experiences that doesn’t involve the transaction of money, goods

or services. It allows us to be exposed to

uncertainty, to take risks, to sense danger

and darkness. As urban explorer Bradley Garrett writes, ‘subjecting our bodies to

circumstances in which we experience extreme and powerful emotions and overwhelming sensory inducements is

something people are rarely, if ever, offered by the modern urban environment.’8

Fig. 4: Urban exploration is an extreme way of experiencing emotion in cities

We have a great fondness for walking because it carries with it ideas of

freedom and liberation. In his oft-cited The Practice Of Everyday Life, Michel de Certeau states that ‘walking is a process of appropriation of the topographical system on the part of the pedestrian…a spatial acting-out of

the place.’9 Geoff Nicholson interprets this as ‘a fancy way of saying that walking is one way of making the world our own.’10 The practice of urban walking – in particular exploratory walking – is seen as one of the ways we can inscribe ourselves on a city that would alienate us in its bustle and efficiency.

7 Coverley, page 10 8 Garrett, Bradley L., Explore Everything: Place-Hacking the City (Verso, 2013) page 162 9 Certeau, Michel De, The Practice of Everyday Life, 3rd Revised edition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011) page 97 10 Nicholson, Geoff, The Lost Art of Walking: The History, Science, Philosophy, Literature, Theory and Practice of Pedestrianism (Harbour Books, 2011) page 33 17

Corina Thomas

THE AUGMENTED FLÂNEUR The way we walk in cities has been fundamentally changed by the introduction of handheld GPS11. Exploratory walking has become secondary to getting

from A to B efficiently. Dr. Brian Dixon argues that walking has become

a peripheral activity, relegated to ‘the highly regulated spaces found in our

parks and retail environments.’12 He interviewed twenty walkers as part of

his PhD at Central Saint Martins and found that the increased security and convenience GPS maps offered had to be weighed against downsides such as excessive dependency on the phone, a loss of serendipity, and reduced

opportunities for social engagement. As one participant observed, ‘the positive aspect is that you’re never lost and the negative aspect is that you’re never lost.’13

Another recent development affecting walking in cities is ‘mixed reality.’

Jaron Lanier coined the term in 1987 to refer to a virtual reality that is

11 Global Positioning System, originally referring to the US government’s Navstar system and used here to describe all satellite positioning technology.

12 Dixon, Brian. ‘A Mobilisation of Walking: GPS Technology and the Exploratory Urban Walker’ in Urban Lab, ‘Urban Pamphleteer #1: Future & Smart Cities’, Urban Pamphleteer <http://urbanpamphleteer.org/future-and-smart-cities> [accessed 17 February 2017] 13 Ibid.

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combined with what is seen in the real world.14 While virtual reality involves

the construction of immersive worlds completely cut-off from the physical

environment, mixed reality preserves the user’s perception but overlays it with

digital information, often through a screen or head-mounted display (HMD).

Paired with the proliferation of smart phones and ubiquitous computing, mixed reality allows the digital and physical to overlap in a spatial way.

The hype Pokémon GO created brought mixed reality into the limelight.

Using Google Map’s data, the game turns civic buildings into strategic locations, driving players to different areas to capture virtual creatures and

interact with other players. In the process, the player navigates the city in an unusual way, abandoning their everyday pursuits and exhibiting a form

of drifting. By combining these opportunities for discovery with rewards for

walking long distances, it makes sense that the Architectural Review would call the game ‘the equivalent of the dérive in the age of Google Maps.’15

Fig. 6: Pokémon GO overlaps real and virtual

Fig. 5: Promotional image for Microsoft

spaces, overlaying imagery onto the camera view

Hololens, a wireless augmented reality headset

14 Lanier, Jaron, quoted in Scientific American <https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ is-pokemon-go-really-augmented-reality/> [accessed 17th June 2017] 15 Knott, Andrew, ‘After Pokémon Go: How Augmented Reality Is Rewriting the City’, Architectural Review <https://www.architectural-review.com/rethink/after-pokmon-go-howaugmented-reality-is-rewriting-the-city/10009620.article> [accessed 23 March 2017] 19

Corina Thomas

While similar GPS or ‘location-based’ games such as Geocaching have been

around for some time, Pokémon GO’s successful use of a popular brand has

cast a spotlight on the facet of mixed reality known as ‘augmented reality’ (AR). AR involves the co-existence of virtual objects in real 3D space, something imagined since virtual reality gained some credibility. Terms such

as ‘cinematic’16 and ‘transmogrified’17 reality have also been used by various

brands to try and set their product apart - Facebook, Google, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Sony, and Samsung all have groups dedicated to this growing branch of technology18.

I have included a full set of definitions in the Glossary. However, for the sake

of this study, I am adapting Adriana de Souza e Silva’s definition19 of ‘mixed reality’ games to include any that: 1.

Take place simultaneously in the digital and physical worlds

3.

Overlay extra information not accessible normally

2.

Require users to be actually moving through physical spaces

I therefore use the term ‘augmentation’ to refer to the extending or enlarging

of physical space with digital information, not limited to the visual – thus, the augmented flâneur who walks the augmented city.

16 Magic Leap’s definition.

17 Google’s definition. <https://uploadvr.com/youve-heard-of-ar-and-vr-but-google-istalking-tr-transmogrified-reality/> [accessed 17th June 2017] 18 This leads to a confusion surround what is and what is not included - for some, using a HMD is a key requirement. Many purists would argue that games like Pokémon do not use true AR and are instead geo-location based games.

19 de Souza e Silva, Adriana. ‘Playful Urban Spaces: A Historical Approach to Mobile Games.’ Simulation & Gaming, Volume 40 Number 5, SAGE Publications, October 2009, page 618 20

Walking the [Augmented] City

Fig. 7: Huge crowds gather at night to capture a rare pokémon in Tin Shu Wai, Hong Kong

This study explores the ways ‘augmented walking’ might resonate with the

traditional idea of the flâneur and dérive. As governments and software companies push to make cities ‘smarter’ through integrated technology, it becomes increasingly relevant to question the impact of such technology on such a fundamental and free act as urban walking.

How might augmented walking help us experience the full emotion of life in cities, countering the ‘banalisation’ of modern life?20 What opportunities for participation in urban environments are there through mixed reality games?

And what do these games offer for the future of the dérive?

20 Coverley, page 13 21

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METHOD I have structured this study around a series of walks in Greater London. I

have chosen against studying the intense heritage centres of the inner city, focusing instead on a relatively busy suburb that nonetheless has its own local

history. Bromley is the central town of the Borough of Bromley, in Zone 5 of

London’s transport network. The Town Centre is the beating heart, but it is

surrounded by several satellite towns. It is a popular location for commuters with families, and is experiencing renewed interest and growth in the light of London’s housing crisis. Having spent the first ten years of my life there

before moving to nearby Orpington, I have always perceived Bromley as separate from London, a sort of tranquil, sheltered oasis of green. As this study takes me back to these familiar spaces, I can offer a perspective on the ways technology might affect this town in particular.

I have explored three smartphone games and documented their influence on my walk, casting the results against the figure of the flâneur, the ideal of the

dérive presented by Debord in his Théorie, and other ideas on walking. I have chosen to use phone games as, while AR headsets have the most potential

to alter how we interact with cities, they are currently not readily available (or socially acceptable) to the average consumer. Thus, as extensions of our physical senses, smart phones are still our primary tool for navigating and experiencing the augmented city.

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Each walk was typically three hours and was recorded through a series of notes, photographs and phone screenshots taken at the time. I have then transcribed

these for the main chapters, documenting my travels as a condensed narrative.

As the Situationists did, I made observations as I walked, and these have been woven into the transcripts where relevant.

After each walk are included moments of pause and reflection, in order to

return to the wider questions raised by the technology. In these chapters, I

have referenced key texts and observations from media debate surrounding

each game. The topic is much wider than could ever be covered here, so I have limited my scope to include only those elements relevant to walking.

Underlying this study is the belief that cities belong to all the people who live in them, and deserve to be shaped by them too.

BROMLEY ORPINGTON

Fig. 8: London Borough of Bromley

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DÃ&#x2030;RIVE #1 [UN-AUGMENTED]

Walking the [Augmented] City

DÉRIVE # 1 – UN-AUGMENTED ‘What then can we learn from the unguided tour, where the important historical aspects of a place are overwhelmed by the sensory, emotional, affective experience of simply being there?’ 21

To begin with, I enact a traditional dérive in Bromley town centre, choosing

my direction based on a personal gravitation towards interesting sights.

Beginning at Bromley South Station, I find myself drawn down a strange alley behind Wetherspoons to the back of a live construction site for Bromley’s new multi-use complex. Will it soon be added to the roster of virtual landmarks, I wonder? Following the perimeter to where it touches on

people’s back gardens, I discover a couple of eclectic garages being run out of

people’s sheds. If I were braver perhaps I would attempt conversation with the cheerful retirees, pottering around with oilcans and wrenches.

Regularly and involuntarily I find myself thinking, “I never knew this was

here” - for example, when I discover the King’s College dialysis unit down a

side street. I start to sense a difference between myself as an observer and the locals, who are so familiar with the places they move through that they do not

21 Garrett, page 34

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observe them anymore. I photograph ad hoc relationships between the town

and its inhabitants, enjoying mundane moments the same as I might enjoy an architectural element. Walks like this create freedom to simply observe the everyday.

A dĂŠrive in somewhere like Bromley is very affected by the road network.

I find myself shying away from crossing main roads, choosing instead to

wander down small residential streets or towards parks. The experience of the

urban walker is one of backs and fronts and sides slipped past on the journey.

Inevitably this meandering brings great delight, especially catching a waft of a

pleasant scent - vinegary chips, bacon frying, freshly mown grass. Greenery is never far away in Bromley, be it allotments or patches of undisturbed foliage

between plots. The pull away from the urban toward these open spaces repeats itself many times.

Staying on the main drag is not unrewarding, however. The pedestrianised

route in the centre of Bromley is home to a thriving market on Saturdays,

selling fish, cheese, clothing, crystal charms and everything in between.

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Dodging passers-by, I look up above the marquees. The high street has an

array of interesting buildings, for example an Art Deco building (now a Laura Ashley) and some of the original Victorian shops. Impossible to miss is the

brutal slab of the Churchill Theatre and Library, built in the 1970s. There are also plenty of opportunities for people-watching here, as the homeless man sat nearby can probably attest.

My exploring brings me around the back of the Theatre down some steep

and uneven stairs. Passing the Churchill Gardens, I become interested in the monumental rear facades of the high streetâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s 20th century buildings. It

is quieter here - I am alone save for a shop dummy peeking from a firstfloor window. Towards the north of the high street the ground is higher, and

on a sunny day such as this even the back roads are pleasant places to be. I rediscover that Bromley even has its own zoo, a humorous collection of wall art adjacent to a car park.

The walk brings a strong nostalgia about my past. While I have been back to my hometown many times since moving away, I have never properly revisited

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the places I spent so much of my childhood. Thus, walking past the church

where I attended preschool and hearing the laughter of the next generation

of toddlers is a poignant moment. So too is wandering up East Street towards the busy traffic intersection by Bromley North station (where I’m told my

father ran a red light as he rushed my mother to hospital the day I was born.)

The Italian restaurant where we spent many a Saturday lunch has gone, but the jewellers with the loud door buzzer is still there. I feel inexplicably sad

revisiting these places, but fortunate at least that the fabric of the town has not changed beyond recognition.

Bromley Council has placed a series of signs next to some of the more

significant objects such as the Town Hall, Millennium Rock and Bromley

Town Pump. In fact, the town is full of signs, but they cannot reveal everything.

What will become of the Town Hall, seeing as it is boarded up? What is it like to work inside the handsome Telephone Exchange building that BT still

operates? Who was laid to rest under the gravestone whose writing is too worn to read? And what is the Old Palace?

The last question brings me to the satisfactory conclusion of this dérive. It turns out that hidden behind the Civic Centre, in an area few visit, is an old

manor house. Roman numerals date its construction to 1775.22 I want to ask my Bromley friends, ‘Did you know we have a palace?’ Once again, I am aware

of the huge amount of knowledge that could be gained about my local area, if only I investigated. As the setting sun casts a serene light on the manor’s pond, I wonder: what more could I possibly understand with augmented

reality? Do I really want to repeat this enjoyable walk through the tiny frame of my phone screen?

22 I later discovered that the Bishops of Rochester have had a long relationship with Bromley, each one living in the manor until 1845. ‘Bromley Bishops Palace (The Gatehouse Record)’ <http://www.gatehouse-gazetteer.info/English%20sites/4022.html> [accessed 23 March 2017] 32

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Fig. 14 - 17: A range of architecture rediscovered in Bromley

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Fig. 18: The Old Palace at Bromley Civic Centre, a piece of hidden history

Fig. 19: The Museum of London’s ‘Streetmuseum’ app lets you overlay historical images in real time

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VIRTUAL PALIMPSEST Raised during this walk was the idea of personal history, and what that means

in the age of interconnectivity and instant communication. There may not be a

plaque on East Street that reads “the Thomas family ate pizza here 1992-2002,” but it is possible that before long we will be adding these markers to our cities.

The built environment is full of personal references that come and go with the

decay of the physical fabric, and it is perhaps here that an augmented reality of a participatory nature might be used to capture significant moments. We already tag real locations in online posts, or accidentally bring up restaurant reviews for places that have already closed down. It is not hard to imagine a

collection of digital ‘Blue Plaques’ for the more mundane and esoteric details.

Thus, one day, an augmented walk may allow us to instantly access subjective responses to a place. We could see video footage from the past, overlaid onto

the present in the same way as the Museum of London’s Streetmuseum app (see Fig. 19.) Whole buildings could be resurrected in-situ. Writing about

mixed reality games, de Souza e Silva quotes Lefebvre’s belief that spaces are not given but constructed, and thus reflect economic, political and social

practices of their time.23 These layers become more accessible when they can

be perceived in the relevant space and seen through the interactions of people from that time.

23 De Souza e Silva, page 604 35

Corina Thomas

However, I wonder whether this additional layer of information might not

also distract from a first-hand experience of space. A common frustration with current GPS apps is that users must keep glancing down, and therefore miss

out on the ‘place-learning’ that comes from looking around.24 Psychologist

James Gibson claims that walkers experience a kind of ‘ambulatory vision’ as they link together vistas and sightlines, that over a period of time allows them to compose a total mental image of their environment.25 Missing things

reduces the rich sense of place this vision might develop. Head-mounted displays may be able to address this and give a greater sense of embodiment

in augmented space, but they also bring the possibility of visual confusion and distraction.26

In order to appreciate the value augmentation

adds

to

urban

environments there needs to be an

awareness of what could be lost in the process. This walk was helpful for

reacquainting me with Bromley, and

reminding me of what I value about a place and the act of walking freely.

Fig. 20: Google Lens, a forthcoming A.I. powered app that can recognise objects in your surroundings

24 Dixon 25 Gibson, James J., The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception, New Ed edition (New York: Routledge, 1986) page 198. Referenced in Dixon, Brian.

26 This is one of the main reasons companies are moving beyond purely sight-based systems to ones incorporating voice-commands – for example, computer assistants such as Siri, Cortana and Alexa.

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DÉRIVE #2 [POKÉMON GO] 37

Corina Thomas

GYM (CLAIMED BY YELLOW TEAM) 3D MAP POKÉMON POKÉSTOP (VISITED) PLAYER AVATAR POKÉSTOP (UNVISITED) NEARBY POKÉMON Fig. 24: Pokemon GO map screen

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DÉRIVE #2 - POKÉMON GO ‘Imagine a technology with which you could see more than others see, hear more than others hear, and perhaps even touch, smell and taste things that others cannot.’27

I undertook the second walk using Pokémon GO, the highly-hyped

smartphone game that rode the waves of 90s nostalgia into summer 2016.28 The game tracks the player’s location on a 3D digital map as they walk in

real life, attempting to capture the titular cartoon creatures as they go. It adds another digital layer through two elements - ‘pokéstops’ and ‘gyms.’ A

pokéstop is usually an architectural feature, artwork, or site of local interest that is tagged in-game with a photo and sometimes a description.29 Here

people can collect virtual items, and pokémon tend to congregate near them.

‘Gyms’ use a similar logic, and are frequently associated with larger edifices

such as churches and stations. Players battle to control a gym for one of the game’s three teams with furious screen tapping.

27 Van Krevelen, page 1 28 ‘Pokémon Go Outpaces Clash Royale as the Fastest Game Ever to No. 1 on the Mobile Revenue Charts’, VentureBeat <http://venturebeat.com/2016/07/11/pokemon-go-outpacesclash-royale-as-the-fastest-game-ever-to-no-1-on-the-mobile-revenue-charts/> [accessed 23 March 2017] 29 These have been either carried across by the game developer Niantic Labs from their previous game Ingress (see Dérive #4) or suggested by players.

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Pokémon has been credited with encouraging people, teenagers mainly, to get out of the house and start exercising, meanwhile discovering their local area. I set off to put this to the test, hoping the walk might reveal something interesting about Bromley.

I begin where the last walk ended, outside the lower end of the shopping centre.

Four pokémon immediately pop up on screen, so I catch them and slowly walk towards a collection of pokéstops at the bottom of the pedestrianised

area. A rarer monster appears on the tracker next to the theatre, and I head towards it, but it vanishes before I get anywhere near. I am quickly discovering

that undertaking a dérive guided by Pokémon GO is not straightforward.

Bromley Town Centre is full of pokéstops, so I do not have to walk far to find

the monsters. I could just stay in one place30. I double up on myself frequently and seem stuck on the high street. In addition, the sunshine that had been

such a blessing to my un-augmented walk hinders the ease of viewing my phone screen.

It is debatable whether this is actually a positive reinforcement of the randomness of the unplanned dérive. Instead of allowing people to ‘be drawn by the attractions of the terrain and the encounters they find there’31 the game produces its own attractions that are not intrinsically linked to physical

fabric (the shadows of nearby Pokémon for example.) This opposes the traditional method of allowing the city’s contours and fixed points guide the

walk, but rather embraces an algorithmic approach. As Guy Debord and his companions would use a set list of repeatable to explore areas of the city, I am

using the game to randomise direction and therefore remove the influence of choice from which spaces I encounter.

30 The game even includes items that encourage you to stay by a stop for half an hour rather than moving around.

31 Debord 42

Walking the [Augmented] City

Despite how frustrating this seems compared to the un-augmented walk, it

does begin to highlight some interesting facets to this kind of exploration.

One is the unexpected nature of the local landmarks that become pokéstops within the game. Rather than architectural features, I find myself observing

the artistic shape of Bromley’s bike racks. I search for a ‘historical milestone’ (10 miles to London Bridge, 14 miles to Sevenoaks) but after several minutes

conclude it must be hidden under a market stall. The most interesting object

I discover is ‘The Beehive’ - a reconstructed piece of 16th century garden wall with a small alcove the may have been for bees, or a lantern or statue.

Fig. 25-28: Screenshots of game object (left) and their real life counterpart (right)

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Another aspect my walk is revealing is a sense of connection with others – ‘the

temporary intimacy of strangers on a

journey,’32 perhaps. In the early days of the game, it seemed everyone was playing, and

I could easily talk to a stranger without it

being abnormal. This is a positive counter to the way GPS maps have all but removed the

need to ask people for directions. I watch the Churchill Theatre ‘gym’ change hands

three times, prompting me to look for

players standing within its attack radius. I eventually find a couple sitting on a bench, Fig. 29: Interacting with strangers by competing to capture the Churchill Theatre Gym

playing for my team. They have placed a ‘lure’ on a nearby pokéstop to attract pokémon to

them. This feature is the reason why large

gatherings of Pokémon players often occur in public squares where there are plenty of pokéstops. If the flâneur aims to ‘set up house in the heart of the

multitude,’33 then perhaps the Pokémon-playing flâneur can find themselves at home in the crowds that follow these pixelated creatures.

Before ending the walk, I ask a group of teenagers playing the game if they are

out looking for pokémon or on their way somewhere. “Oh no,” they answer, “we’re just going to a birthday party.” Do they feel as if it has taught them more about their local area? They seem unsure. Parting ways, I muse that

perhaps the game is less an exploratory tool than a way to fill up cracks of spare time. Pokémon GO can show players what to look for and increase the intensity of discovery, but they have to already be paying attention.

32 Georg Simmel, “The Sociology of Space”, in Frisby, David and Featherstone, Mike (eds.), Simmel on Culture, (London: Sage, 1997) 33 Baudelaire, page 4 44

Walking the [Augmented] City

Fig. 30: Photographs from the walk of physical signs and maps that give the town character. These could be incorporated into AR apps, or potentially rendered obsolete by virtual signage.

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POKÉMON GOING Georg Simmel wrote about the adventure as the moment where we drop out

of the continuity of everyday life in order to experience something out of the ordinary.34 The loosening of ties to life’s usual contexts leads to an alternative way of experiencing time, as in a dream, and it is remembered differently. This fits neatly with Debord’s requirement that to undertake a dérive, a person should ‘drop their relations, their work and leisure activities, and all their other

usual motives for movement and action.’35 Pokémon players have been known

to leave work36 or run out of the house in the middle of the night in order to make a rare catch. The game revolves around the unexpected encounter. In

this way, augmentation enforces Simmel’s belief that modernity causes us to seek ways to break through layers of mundane reality.

Pokémon Go is not the first game to use location-based AR: ‘exergames’ such as Zombies!Run! use Google Maps and GPS to track players’ jogging routes

around their local area, augmenting it with an audible story. Similarly, what

the game offers for historical discovery has been developed in more depth in apps like Jewish Time Jump, a history trail exploring the experiences of 34 Simmel, Georg, The Adventure, 1911, in Featherstone and Frisby 35 Debord 36 Or even leave their job entirely: ‘Man in New Zealand Quits His Job to Play Pokemon Go Full-Time’, BBC Newsbeat, 2016 <http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/36814165/man-innew-zealand-quits-his-job-to-play-pokemon-go-full-time> [accessed 21 June 2017] 46

Fig. 31: 1000 people turn up to a Pokémon Go walk in Sydney

Jewish immigrants in New York. However, the game is unique in providing

an accessible platform that incorporates both well-known city centres rich in landmarks, and obscure suburbs with little going on. City-based AR games

need to be painstakingly constructed by developers and are often limited

to larger metropolises, whereas Pokémon Go suggests a more participatory world map enhanced by user-generated content– like a walkable Wikipedia.

When developer John Hanke spoke about creating GO’s predecessor Ingress, he said he ‘wanted people to look around with fresh perspective on the places they passed by every day, looking for the unusual, the little hidden

flourish or nugget of history.’37 This then translated directly into Pokémon 37 Hatfield, Tom, ‘Ingress: The Game That Reveals Google’s Secret War to Control London’, The Guardian, 4 June 2014, section Technology <https://www.theguardian.com/ technology/2014/jun/04/ingress-the-game-that-reveals-googles-secret-war-to-controllondon> [accessed 3 February 2017] 47

Corina Thomas

GO’s gameplay. The criteria for inclusion as a pokéstop or gym includes any

locations with ‘a cool story, place in history or educational value,’ ‘a cool piece of art or unique architecture’ or ‘a hidden gem, or hyper-local spot.’38

Some locations have embraced the phenomenon: churches began offering

tea and biscuits to players; the US National Parks encouraged playing while enjoying the real natural environment; Las Vegas even produced Pokémon-

themed city guides.39 At the same time, the game has had bizarre side effects.

Within days of its release, news sites reported users finding dead bodies

Fig. 32: First Baptist church in Roanoke, West Virginia, welcomes Pokémon GO-ers

38 ‘Candidate Portal Criteria’, Ingress Help <http://support.ingress.com/hc/en-us/ articles/207343987-Candidate-Portal-criteria> [accessed 17 February 2017] 39 Mann, Antonia, ‘Gamifying the City: How AR Can Create Motion – and Emotion’, Idealog, 2017 <http://idealog.co.nz/design/2017/01/gamifying-city> [accessed 24 March 2017] 48

Walking the [Augmented] City

in Wyoming40, or being mugged by thieves targeting popular areas where pokémon spawn. The game conjured images of players walking around like

zombies, falling down holes, colliding with things or toppling off their bikes and skateboards. People were accused of trespassing, or criticised for playing in sensitive cultural sites such as the Washington Holocaust Memorial and

the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park41. The blame was laid on Niantic Labs for including such sites in the first place, raising questions as to what sort of behaviour is reserved for certain spaces.

Because of this, a sort of Nolli42 plan of the city is re-emerging, as people

start to reclaim forgotten corners of their neighbourhood through brief visits or longer stays. Many of these spaces were already public but had in a sense closed themselves off due to neglect. While Pokémon has given a

boost to their popularity, what these spaces offer is not new. They must be

pleasant, comfortable, open environments where people feel welcome, with

the additional quality of a good wireless signal. In fact, Pokémon GO can be a good barometer for whether a space is working or not. Archdaily editor

Patrick Lynch writes that ‘unlike traditional plazas, whose development is

often dictated by historical or economic motives, the success of a Pokémon space is entirely democratic.’43 Lynch hopes that games such as this will

40 ‘Pokemon Go Player Finds Dead Body in Wyoming River While Searching for a Pokestop’ <http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/36757858/pokemon-go-player-finds-dead-body-inwyoming-river-while-searching-for-a-pokestop> [accessed 28 March 2017] 41 Matulef, Jeffrey, ‘Pokémon Go Removed from the Hiroshima Peace Memorial and Holocaust Museum’, Eurogamer, 2016 <http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2016-08-09pokemon-go-has-been-removed-from-the-hiroshima-peace-memorial-and-holocaustmuseum> [accessed 28 March 2017] 42 Referring to Giambattista Nolli’s figure-ground drawing of Rome showing enclosed public spaces in white to indicate civic areas.

43 Lynch, Patrick. ‘21st Century Nolli: How Pokemon GO and Augmented Reality Could Shape Our Cities’, ArchDaily, 2016 <http://www.archdaily.com/791694/21st-century-nollihow-pokemon-go-and-augmented-reality-could-shape-our-cities> [accessed 10 March 2017] 49

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enable more crowd-sourcing to develop their maps, giving people even greater control over the physical spaces they occupy.

My Pokémon GO walk was partly successful, in that it revealed a sense of

the participatory city. However, the town centre in Bromley is particularly linear, which reduces the complexity of the walk and leaves less room for

encountering unusual areas. Starting from a less central location may have yielded different results. By paying attention to my phone, I felt only half-

connected to the physical environment around me. As is demonstrated above, you let the game determine your direction at your peril.

Fig. 33. Pokémon GO features in the music video for Moby’s ‘Are You Lost In The World Like Me? showing a dystopian world of smarphone addiction

50

DÉRIVE #2 [POKÉMON GO] DÉRIVE #3 [GEOCACHING]

Corina Thomas

Fig. 37 -38: Screenshots of Geocaching app showing map with compass, and cache location information.

Where they can, Geocachers will provide detailed descriptions of nearby attractions and their history.

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Walking the [Augmented] City

DÉRIVE #3 – GEOCACHING ‘‘I’ve performed all the slack, idle, casual forms of walking. I’ve strolled and wandered, pottered and tottered, dawdled and shuffled, mooched and sauntered

and meandered. I’ve certainly ambled, and I could be said to have rambled...and probably I’ve shambled, but I don’t think I’ve ever gambolled.’ 44

Geocaching has been around since 2000, and is one of the natural forerunners to AR games. Players use GPS to locate ‘caches’ placed in the real world by

other players. These can be anything from a large box containing items to be swapped in or out, to a tiny tube the size of an eraser. Some are harder to find,

or require certain conditions to be met before they can be accessed in order to sign the logbook. Geocaching continues the idea of the ‘letterboxing,’45 a

more traditional treasure-hunt hobby. However, it can be counted a form of

augmentation as players must access the digital map and compass in order to find a cache.

I begin my walk at the north of the high street where I can see a few promising

icons on the map – a series of ‘micro’ caches placed near local churches. It 44 Nicholson, page 24 45 A quest for hidden letterboxes that contain unique hand-carved stamps. The finder stamps their journal, and in turn, stamps the letterbox’s logbook with their own personal stamp. ‘Atlas Quest: A Letterboxing Community’ <https://www.atlasquest.com/> [accessed 24 June 2017] 55

Corina Thomas

is mid-afternoon on a weekday, and schoolchildren throng the pavements. I

dodge a couple of French Bulldogs as I follow a leafy path behind Sainsbury’s.

To the left is the lush private garden surrounding Bromley College – a mysterious, high windowed brick building with tall chimneys.46 The college green is open to the public, and has a few additions for nature lovers: an ‘insect

hotel’ full of pine cones, bamboo and corrugated cardboard; a wildflower hill, and a small bivouac made of woven willow.

At the listed coordinates for the cache, I am looking for something matching

the clue; ‘not much of a barrier, waist high.’ I find the rusted parking barrier, but fail to locate the cache. I do dislodge some snails in the process. If I was to continue feeling for the small object in the tangle of bindweed I would probably find it, but I am wary of appearing suspicious to ‘muggles’47 – what geocachers call people who do not play the game. Disappointed, but pleased

to have discovered the College Green, I move on to the next icon on the map.

Following a wide street with

Victorian terraces on one side and

large offices on the other, I find

myself among the restaurants on

East Street again. Today, however,

there is little sense of nostalgia.

Instead I am fuelled by my mission

to locate the next cache. There is a sense of navigating purposefully

towards an object, rather than

Fig. 39: Insect Hotel on the College Green

46 The building is Grade I Listed, a college and almshouse built in 1670 to provide housing for 20 widows of clergymen. ‘Bromley College, Bromley Town, London’ <http://www. britishlistedbuildings.co.uk/101359324-bromley-college-bromley-town-ward> [accessed 22 June 2017] 47 Named after non-magic users in the world of J K Rowling’s Harry Potter books.

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Walking the [Augmented] City

along desire lines based on sight. At the listed coordinates I locate the tiny

brown church sandwiched between the shop buildings, thinking, how have I

not noticed this before? It has been there at least as long as I have been alive.

Finding the church is not the goal, however, as the next cache requires me to

work out a set of coordinates from the church’s sign and follow them to the actual place it is hidden.

The hunt brings me northward again, to the tarmac

wastes behind Bromley North station. However, the

enjoyment soon fades, as it takes me an age to find

the cache. I have learned that road signs make useful places to hide small plastic tubes like the cache I

am looking for. Because I have put the wrong coordinates into my phone, it is quite some time

before I realise why none of the road signs in that

area are the right one.48 Luckily, I find it in the end, extract the tiny roll of paper, sign my name before putting it back with a sense of satisfaction.

I head towards the next cache, passing the 150-year

old Baptist Church and its unusual neighbour. Wary of my near-failure, I skip what seems an even trickier

cache and come to the United Reformed Church that hulks next to the shopping centre. This building

has a fascinating combination of shapes, with a

sloping roof, decorative grill and timber window slats. Shoppers hang about under the glazed awning

Fig. 40: Screenshot showing ‘Find’ log where users can comment on the difficulty level or notify the owner of any issues

of the bus stop, I imagine confused by my interest in the church. I decipher the coordinates quickly

and correctly this time, but unfortunately do not 48 I do enjoy the road names, though – Tweedy, Glebe, Florence, Babbacombe 57

Corina Thomas

manage to find the cache, in spite of walking back and forth several times. I assume it has been tampered with or removed.

In lieu of this setback I try looking for one last cache, and I am glad I do. The clue is hidden in the giant Charles Darwin mural in the town centre, next to the old (replica) water pump. The artist is the same Bruce Williams as painted

â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Bromley Zooâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; and his phone number even features in the coordinate puzzle.

When was Darwin born? How many books are in the pile next to him? How

many dove holes are in the tree? I enjoy studying the mural for the answers,

looking at it properly for the first time in years. I remember the tribute to H. G. Wells that came before it, the quivering stings of the Martians seeming to lean menacingly towards me. Someone has made the effort to link the game to this bit of local history, and their touch is like another hidden brushstroke on the wall.

The walk concludes after a brisk cut through the Glades to the adventure playground on the other side. Once again, this is an exposed spot, but this

actually helps me locate the tiny black canister in one of the few places it could be concealed. This ended up a long walk considering I did not travel very far, or see many new areas. However, I have seen the town in a completely

different light through these intense searches, digging deep into its fabric. I have watched for the movement of people as something to avoid rather than

embrace. And I am allowed to place one small mark on Bromley â&#x20AC;&#x201C; a miniature

signature on a snatch of paper, rolled up into the tube and hidden again, to be found by the next explorer.

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SEARCHING THE CITY The description of the walk alone reveals that it was more successful as a

form of exploration than Pokémon GO. However, I wonder if Geocaching

actually belongs more to the past than the future. GPS is not a very new

technology, and some caches require such old-fashioned tools as ciphers, magnets, and the ability to use various coordinate systems. In this, the game

is not augmented reality, just aided by digital technology. However, similar games could make use of further augmentation by allowing virtual hints to

be overlaid onto locations, requiring players to scan the building to access the next clue. The key would be maintaining a challenging search aspect but removing the frustration of not knowing if the cache has gone missing.

One observation from this walk is that Geocaching makes Pokémon look

easy. It is real, gritty work finding caches, and the sense of reward is deeper.

Geocaching is very tied to place, and caches are often diligently looked after by locals.49 They have been placed there by true local explorers instead of Google

Maps cyber-flâneurs. The varying difficulty levels mean someone could play

casually while passing through an area, or spend more time homing in on a difficult cache as I did. Either way, they would engage with the physical

49 There is a high likelihood that easily accessible caches will be ‘muggled’ – that is, tampered with or removed by non-players. This introduces a degree of regulation into the game, as caches require maintaining or relocating regularly.

60

Walking the [Augmented] City

space, maintaining awareness of people, cars and objects rather than seeing the world through a screen.

The relationship between players and non-players is an important one – namely, that non-players must be kept in the dark as much as possible. The

‘magic circle’ of the game is rigid rather than blurred, as in other urban games that can accidentally include strangers.50 People who have placed geocaches

often asked players to ‘use maximum stealth’ while searching, but it is hard to imagine how, unless it were night. Where the un-augmented walk made

me feel like a detached observer, this one made me the subject of suspicion.

Considering our surveillance-obsessed nation, it is possible that a cache could be mistaken for something more sinister, especially in populated areas; “Hello officer. I was just trying to place a small metal box underneath this bench...”

Geocaching therefore seems to be a solitary game, a private search that must be undertaken without disclosing anything to non-players. But this hypothesis is undermined by signatures in the logbooks from groups

of geocachers. The online system of logging finds or didnot-finds creates a nexus of personal relations that keep

the game fun, and it is this spark of humanity that has kept the game going for nearly 20 years. Geocaching certainly feels like a positive way of interacting with the

urban environment, one that might make the average citizen a little wiser to its hidden nooks and crannies.

Fig. 42: This ‘nano’ cache shows just how small caches can be

50 de Souza e Silva, page 608 61

DÃ&#x2030;RIVE #4 [INGRESS]

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XM ENERGY BAR (DROPS WHEN AN ACTION IS PERFORMED)

PORTAL (NEUTRAL)

PORTAL (CLAIMED BY GREEN TEAM) FIELD CREATED BETWEEN PORTALS XM ENERGY

COMMUNICATE WITH OTHER PLAYERS Fig. 45: Ingress map screen

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DÉRIVE #4 – INGRESS ‘A magic world is a world that tends to give precedence to myth over history. The ambiguity of the relation between digital architecture, digital city and historical

time may very well be linked to the confused feeling that we have entered a new enchanted realm.’51

The final walk was undertaken using Ingress (2012), the predecessor to Pokémon Go. I chose this game because despite sharing characteristics and

locations with Pokémon GO, its mechanics are very different. Rather than imagining the city as full of hidden creatures, Ingress asks players to see it as a

territory. Two factions compete to claim the greater area by capturing ‘portals’ – geotagged landmarks that range from sculptures and memorial plaques to

pubs and local graffiti.52 Multiple portals can be linked to create ‘fields’ that encompass territory and add to the faction score. The game encourages wide exploration and teamwork. Keen players boast of travelling long distances to

find remote portals and create vast fields, sometimes across whole countries.53

51 Picon, Antoine, ‘Magical Digital?’ in Urban Lab, ‘Urban Pamphleteer #1: Future & Smart Cities’, Urban Pamphleteer <http://urbanpamphleteer.org/future-and-smart-cities> [accessed 17 February 2017] 52 Some are the same as used in Pokémon GO, though Ingress use many more.

53 The longest possible link between two portals is 6881.28km.

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For this walk, I focus on the town centre of Orpington, a few miles southeast

of Bromley, to avoid being influenced by the locations from the Pokémon GO walk. Orpington has many similarities to Bromley, such as a linear high

street and close proximity to parks, as well as a rich ecclesiastical history. In

the proper cooperative spirit, I take along a friend who also has downloaded the game, and we embark on our mission for the green team, Enlightened.

Beginning at one end of the high street, we work our way through a series

of portals, mainly shop fronts. Many of the photographs in the game are of

the more interesting architecture above ground level, so that if we do look up

while playing we notice more about our surroundings. Unfortunately, much of our attention is still focussed on our phone screens, particularly as portals come thick and fast in this area. Between the two of us we do spot some

new things: a quaint Tudoresque barbershop; large metal letters for ‘The Old

Village Causeway’ - the name for the shopping parade in the 1930s - and the Maypole shop, a year-round tribute to Orpington’s May Queen celebrations.

We are following a trail of grey, unclaimed

portals. The

whole

of

Orpington seems to mainly belong to the opposing team, making it hard to

set up any ‘links’ or ‘fields.’ Thus, we head towards Priory Gardens at the fringe,

where an enticing set of unclaimed portals await. The gardens surround the

old medieval priory, the oldest building

in the area and a beloved local asset.

The museum and library in the building

closed down last year, and the area feels empty but not neglected. As we set up Fig. 46 The Grade II* Listed Orpington Priory and its antique-style gardens

our first field, we discuss the future of the building, me vaguely remembering 68

Walking the [Augmented] City

that it has been bought privately.54 “I’d rather see it used as something for the community,” my friend remarks.

The gardens are a strangely tranquil part of Orpington, well maintained, but notoriously unsafe

at night due to a lack of surveillance. They back

onto All Saint’s Church and several cemeteries, lending the area a pastoral quality. Walking around

capturing portals, mainly memorial benches, we sense how far we are from London. The town’s history as a small village is not too far in the past. We find a Millennium Rock to match the one in Bromley and

a plaque commemorating Ivy Millichamp, the last

British citizen to be killed by German bombing in World War II. The physical signs have just enough

information, and significantly more than in Ingress.

Thinking back to my earlier idea of digital Blue Plaques, I decide I would not want to do away with

the physical components. They have an aura based

Fig. 47: A 2000 million year old piece of Lewisian Gneiss from Lochinver, North West Scotland

on their appearance, the texture of age, the sense of a

human hand placing them. A digital timestamp is not quite the same.

As we march back and forth creating fields55, we face the AR gamer’s dilemma – to go, or not to go, into the graveyard. Is it acceptable behaviour

54 Local residents were disappointed when the council sold the buildings on a 125-year lease to London-based arts organisation V22, instead of backing the Orpington Priority Community Hub’s bid.

55 It is actually quite difficult to create a field because it requires linking three portals to each other, meaning players must visit each one at least once, and some twice if they are working alone.

69

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to walk around the resting places of the dead playing on a phone? My friend’s

irreverent attitude is that “they’re not really in a state to care...” However,

neither of us want to be that person giving the game a bad name, so we pass.

We choose instead to skirt the path between the park and the graveyard before coming back on ourselves to link up the rest of the portals in the

gardens. Overtaking a family trailing the entire goose population, we pass a pair of adults playing Pokémon, who exchange a knowing smile.

As we conclude our walk, I ask my friend if they think augmented reality

games would affect walking in future. “If it picks up and becomes another sort of social event, maybe. It gives you the best of everything, and the worst of

everything. You can’t really play casually.” I agree. We have not been so much

strolling as engraving our path on the park as we double up on ourselves, like Richard Long’s A Line Made by Walking. The triangular nature of Ingress fields negates practicing a linear walk. We haven’t travelled very far, but do gain a sense of satisfaction seeing the virtual layer of green we have laid over

the gardens. I wonder if what matters most is the motivation to get outside and occupy spaces, taking back the city for yourself as you try and take it for your team.

Fig. 48: Richard Long’s ‘A Line Made by Walking’ 70

Fig. 49: A virtual field of green

Walking the [Augmented] City

BATTLEFIELD CITY Ingress is suggestive of an augmented future bordering on the present, mainly through its sci-fi narrative.56 The white-on-black ‘cyber’ aesthetics and

minimalist map seem to strengthen the virtual aspect in the mind while players cross real space. Guardian games correspondent Tom Hatfield remarks that

Ingress has opened his eyes to a different level of action in the city. ‘Teams of

agents are fighting a secret war for control of my local post office...I know that now and I can’t un-know it.’57 He is referring to a mental linking of the cyber

to the real that is becoming commonplace. As a speaker on the game’s trailer states, ‘The line between reality and the game and the story gets blurred.’58

56 The game itself references augmentation. The ongoing storyline revolves around energy called ‘exotic matter’ (XM) that can enhance people’s intellectual abilities. Once the design of an XM scanner is leaked (a metaphor for the Ingress app) anyone can access these extra layers of information.

57 Hatfield, Tom. ‘Ingress: The Game That Reveals Google’s Secret War to Control London’, The Guardian, 4 June 2014, section Technology <https://www.theguardian.com/ technology/2014/jun/04/ingress-the-game-that-reveals-googles-secret-war-to-controllondon> [accessed 3 February 2017] 58 Ingress Niantic Project - It’s Time to Move. <https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=92rYjlxqypM> [accessed 30 March 2017] 71

Fig. 50. World map showing links greater than 200km that users have created across countries

At times, I have found this idea slightly unsettling. I had to sign in to my Google+ account to initialise the game59, as to play effectively players must cooperate with others. This meant joining the Enlightened Google+ team and

the Greater London team on the corporate platform Slack. Users immediately asked how I was getting on and advised me to level up. They also wanted to

know where I live and travel regularly so I could get involved in local tactics.

Players like to ‘verify’ players by meeting them in person. In addition, when

attacking an enemy portal, they receive an update and learn who it is that is

attacking - during our walk, the player who created the portals messaged us to see how we were doing. This emphasis on ‘real life’ encounters sets Ingress apart and puts it in the realm of a Massively Multiplayer Online game, where players interact under usernames.

I contacted members of the loose Greater London team to ask if they felt

59 Niantic began as a start-up within Google before becoming independent in 2015, which is why it uses many of their platforms such as GoogleMaps.

72

Fig. 51. Scene from Ingress game trailer showing historical monuments augmented with ‘exotic matter’

the game had affected their understanding of their locale60. Some were very

enthusiastic. ‘I know every little nook and cranny of my area now,’ remarked

one, ‘I’m the expert of my friends.’ This is interesting, as during the walk my friend said the game “is not going to encourage everyone to be tour guides

for their city,” because it distracts players from their physical surroundings.

However, people claim to be able to navigate more effectively by pubs, churches and local artworks.

This seems to resonate with the wayfinding techniques detailed in Kevin

Lynch’s Image of the City (1960), where Lynch used a series of surveys to

identify the components of citizens’ mental images of their locale – paths, edges, landmarks, nodes, and regions.61 Lynch suggests people use these elements to increase the ‘imagability’ of the city, allowing them to navigate and structure their environment. In a similar way, Ingress players gain knowledge 60 I communicated with members of the Enlightened Greater London team through the messaging app Slack.

61 Lynch, Kevin, The Image of the City, First Edition edition (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1960) page 95 73

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of their neighbourhood by synthesising the game map with the monuments and buildings they encounter, building an augmented picture in their minds.

Fig. 52: Kevin Lynch suggests navigation can be split into paths, edges, landmarks, nodes and regions

It is possible that the popularity of urban warfare AR games such as

Ingress enable a different view of the city, as a game board or a battlefield.

This transforms how players see the crowd – they are either friend, foe, or civilian. In his essay The Metropolis and Mental Life (1903), Simmel wrote that rapidly shifting sensations of life in modern cities have given rise to a ‘blasé

attitude’62, part of what David Frisby calls ‘a weakening of our capacity for strong impressions.’63 The urbanite is so used to an overload of information that they seek out ever more diverse impressions. The antagonism and

paranoia inherent in Ingress contributes to a heightened emotional response that corresponds to Simmel’s idea of the urban thrill-seeker. You can walk

away, put your phone in your pocket, but your awareness of the secondary layer of action remains.

62 Simmel, Georg, The Metropolis and Mental Life, 1903, page 14 63 Frisby, David, Cityscapes of Modernity: Critical Explorations (Wiley, 2001) page 112 74

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THE FUTURE OF THE DÉRIVE ‘Democratisation of data - both its widespread use and its universal creation -

will result in a new kind of infrastructure: a geospatial infrastructure. Over time, society will become increasingly dependent on this geospatial infrastructure, much as it has become dependent on other, more traditional forms of infrastructure such as electrical grids or highway networks.’ 64

Augmented reality in cities has long been in the public imagination, thanks to

its foreshadowing in science fiction cinema. From Blade Runner and Ghost in the Shell to Minority Report and Iron Man, many filmmakers have envisioned

that information could be placed before our eyes when needed, or piped into

our ears by a chirpy Paul Bettany. It does not matter that people wearing Google Glass are the stuff of ridicule, or that personal computer assistants

like Siri seem to be universally loathed. We have always hoped that the jungle

of signs around us might be able to come to life in colour and light. Now, we can hold our screen up to the world and reveal the hidden worlds within.

One aspect of this possible future is that it creates opportunities for imaginative play in cities. According to recent studies, we are suffering from a shortage of

64 Dangermond, Jack, ‘Geography by Design’ in Jazairy, El Hadi, Scales of the Earth (Harvard University Press, 2011) 75

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boredom. 65 It is much more appealing to turn to our phones to fill the gaps

of waiting time during the day. In young people, this is especially destructive, as children need to spend time ‘imagining and pursuing their own thinking

processes, or assimilating their experiences through play, or just observing the world around them.’66 ‘Gamifying’ the city can combine exploration of its physical spaces with imaginative original ideas for its future. What I hope AR

can do is go beyond being a product to be consumed, and instead enable our imaginations to take off to new levels. As a form of ‘serious play,’ the dérive will continue to be relevant here.

Fig. 53: The Passage Jouffroy in Paris, built in 1845 65 Levin, Diane, quoted in Perry, Georgia, ‘Imagination in the Augmented-Reality Age’, The Atlantic, 4 August 2016 <https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/08/play-in-theaugmented-reality-age/494597/> 66 Belton, Dr Teresa, quoted by Richardson, Hannah, ‘Children Should Be Allowed to Get Bored, Expert Says’, BBC News, 23 March 2013, section Education & Family <http://www.bbc. co.uk/news/education-21895704> [accessed 24 June 2017] 76

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AR also has the potential to accentuate the labyrinthine qualities of the city, for better or worse. Walter Benjamin identified the Parisian arcade as one of three spatial layers of labyrinthine reality in modernity, alongside the chaos

of the city itself and its underworld.67 Arcades were places of fantasy and timelessness, both outside and inside at the same time; dream-worlds of the commodity. Here the flâneur was born, and here he could lose himself among

the extravagant displays, or in the ever-changing crowd. As these spaces

were primarily a visual labyrinth, similarly, augmentation has so far focused

on appealing to sight. It offers a whole new category of sights and sounds

Fig. 54: Still from â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Hyperrealityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; by Keiichi Matsuda showing the dizzying possibilities of AR

67 Frisby, David, Fragments of Modernity, page 210 77

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to be experienced, and in the future perhaps the other senses will be more

fully catered to. The flâneur of the future might gain vast enjoyment from the resulting disorientation.

However, the average inhabitant of the metropolis might not. If we are not careful, augmented reality risks confining itself to creating arcades of

digital advertising. Already, AR has been adopted for bringing brands to life, ahead of less commercial applications. These could one day take the form of personalised ads, appearing to one user’s vision only, as in Keiichi Matsuda’s short film, Hyperreality.68 According to Michael Bhaskar, we are still experiencing ‘the Long Boom in everything’ whereby we have too much

choice, thanks to growing productivity since the Industrial Revolution.69 Companies such as Netflix and Facebook have successfully navigated this by

providing curated, customised content. If everybody is participating in AR

in our cities then perhaps it too will have to be curated, cultivated even. The question remains, who does the curating?

Which brings us to possibly the biggest cause for concern with this technology at the moment; the question of who owns our data. All the games in this

study use location tracking, and that data is freely given to the developer. It is hard to believe we used to be suspicious of putting our details into a website,

when now we will let everyone know where we are and what we are doing.

Jaron Lanier argues that the early internet years emphasised open access

and knowledge-sharing in a way that no longer makes sense, since today

68 Matsuda, Keiichi, HYPER-REALITY, 2016 <https://vimeo.com/166807261> [accessed 20 June 2017] Referenced in Afshar, Amir, ‘*404 Error* City Not Found’ (unpublished Postgraduate Dissertation, Royal College of Art, 2016) 69 Bhaskar, Michael, Curation: The Power of Selection in a World of Excess, 1 edition (London: Piatkus, 2016) 78

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aggregated data is extremely valuable to large companies.70 His answer is to

monetise the use of our personal data, which could potentially give control back to the user. However, in order to use a companyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s app, we will inevitably have to surrender some of our data. Must we shed our sense of discomfort, as

I did when playing Ingress, and accept the loss of privacy that is the price of access to the augmented city?

Fig. 55: Tony Stark uses augmented reality and artificial intelligence to design mechanical suits in the Iron Man films

70 Scott, Laurence, Review of Lanier, Jaron, Who Owns the Future? in The Guardian, 27 February 2013, section Books <https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/feb/27/who-ownsfuture-lanier-review> 79

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REFLECTION ON THE WALKS The four walks each serve to illustrate something different about augmentation, and have created glimpses of a future Bromley whereby traditional methods

of gaining knowledge have been supplanted by more immediate, personalized data. Whereas Pokémon GO restrained me to the high street and became

more of a casual game to play while walking, Ingress and Geocaching became all-consuming tasks suited to less central areas.

I cannot say that the walks authentically kept to the original idea of the dérive; rather, the difference between them is telling. Debord wrote that he was ‘not at all interested in any mere exoticism that may arise from the fact that one

is exploring a neighbourhood for the first time.’71 I definitely succumbed to

this, especially during the first un-augmented walk. It was also difficult not to let the documentation of the walk have too much sway, and transcribing

my notes has potentially lent some moments more significance than was felt at the time. However, Debord did emphasise behavioural disorientation and

extraction from daily routines in order to explore the urban environment in an

unplanned way. This was easier to achieve with the three games because they took the choice of direction out of my hands.

71 Debord stated in his Theorie that this must be avoided during a dérive in order for it to be a ‘scientific’ means of investigation.

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The main difficulty while undertaking this study has been accessing the

necessary technology. While most of what I have written about already exists, there is currently a disappointing lack of apps available that apply to walking.

There are certainly many AR apps for the smartphone, but herein lies another problem â&#x20AC;&#x201C; there is no consensus as to which to use, so the information is

spread across a smattering of different platforms. As mentioned before, it takes effort on the part of the town or city to set up markers for AR, or

provide location-specific checkpoints within the game. Niantic were only able to incorporate large parts of the real world because of their relationship to Google. In fact, many apps simply rely on Google Maps, so add very little extra understanding.

As I conclude this study, I am left in two minds. On the one hand, I relish the

empowering qualities of AR; its potential for democratising space and giving the smart city a fun, human face. On the other, I wonder if we are simply

adding more layers of confusing impressions to the already baffling metropolis, knowing we have lost the clarity of the past but looking for it again in the many apps promising to make life a bit easier. However, I still believe AR has

the potential to grow massively in the next few years, because the foundation

is laid and the desire is there. Antonia Mann writes for Idealog that â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;as cities become smarter and more data integrated, people will concurrently expect more intuitive and contextual information about their cities in their hands.â&#x20AC;&#x2122;72 It is up to us to decide whether this will render us passive consumers of digital information, or active participators, rewriting the city as we walk it.

72 Mann

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GLOSSARY Augmented reality (AR) – generally, the real-time overlaying of digital content onto the user’s surroundings to provide additional information when

viewed through a lens.73 AR often requires physical tags (such as QR codes)

in order to align objects. True AR tracks the viewer’s angle and adapts the image accordingly.

Related products: Aurasma, Layar, Zappar, Blippar Head-mounted display (HMD) – a wearable device, often a transparent lens, onto which images can be projected to give the illusion that the user is

actually ‘seeing’ virtual objects. Some, known as virtual retinal displays, project images directly onto the retina.

Related products: Google Glass (2015), Microsoft HoloLens (2016), Magic Leap (pending) CastAR (pending)

Location-based games (LBG) – games that use GPS tracking and a digital interface, requiring at least one player to be physically present in a location.

Related products: Geocaching (2000), Can You See Me Now? (2003), MOGI (2003), Parallel Kingdom (2008), Ingress (2012), Pokémon GO (2016)

73 Ronald Azuma’s definition is not restricted to particular display technologies or the purely visual. He defines AR systems to to share the following properties: 1) Blends real and virtual, in a real environment 2) Real-time interactive 3) Registered in 3D. Azuma, Ronald. ‘A Survey of Augmented Reality.’ Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, pp. 355–385, August 1997.

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Mixed/hybrid reality (MR) – can refer to either; a.

b.

Any system where real and digital objects coexist in 3D space, or

A system that maps and understands physical space in order to overlay information in the correct location

Related products: Microsoft Hololens (by self-declaration), Magic Leap Reality-virtuality continuum – the spectrum between fully real – ‘reality’ and fully simulated – ‘virtuality’ - as coined by Paul Milgram in 1994.74

Virtual reality (VR) – wholly virtual environments simulated by a computer, experienced often through a VR headset with the addition of speakers and

haptic controllers. VR is fully immersive and involves cutting off sense of

the physical world, though today there are systems that can incorporate the player’s surroundings to prevent collisions.

Related products: Flight simulators, Oculus Rift (2016), HTC Vive (2016)

74 Milgram, Paul; H. Takemura; A. Utsumi; F. Kishino (1994). ‘Augmented Reality: A class of displays on the reality-virtuality continuum’. Telemanipulator and Telepresence Technologies: Volume 2351, Proceedings of SPIE; 31 October - 1 November 1994; Boston, Massachusettes, page 34.

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