I Predict A Riot

Several weeks ago I was part of a riot, an online interactive riot that is. As a part of the Sydney Fringe Festival, the project Black Friday allowed history buffs and the curious to learn a little more about the Inner West’s dark past. In 1931 a bus full of police descended upon 143 Union St to enforce an eviction notice. This was at the time when many people could not pay their rent due to the hardships created by the Depression. As there was a presence of ‘Communists’ who allegedly encouraged forceful behaviour the eviction spiralled into a riot as a group of men had barricaded 143 Union St and began to throw missiles on to the police. Many of the men were seriously injured.

On the night of my experience I was armed with a GPS device and headphones. There was a map in which there were designated areas you had to visit. Once you reached these areas an historical video would play in which you could learn from those involved what happened. During your walk a narrative was spoken about the events of the day. However it wasn’t as simple to just walk from historical place to place. You were occasionally attacked by police, or collected comrades on the way.

Although not always smooth sailing during the experience (such as going off course), it was a really interesting and innovative way to learn about my local areas history. Rather than visiting a museum in which historical artefacts and stories are enclosed within a building that has no connection with the event you can actually get out there and visit the sites of relevance and have a more interactive and tactile experience.

This is an interesting example in which the reality and technology combine to create am interactive experience. In this instance the participant’s experience is of walking through a quite suburb of Sydney is mediated by the GPS device. In essence it is creating a new or ‘augmented’ reality for us, shaping our knowledge in a way that touring a museum could not. As Bolter and Grusin state, “virtual reality reforms reality by giving us an alternative visual world and insisting on that world as the locus of presence and meaning for us” (1999:61). Applying this idea of Bolter and Grusin’s to the Black Friday concept suggests that the video clips that inform us of the experiences of various characters become central to our understanding, rather than peripheral stories.

This ‘enhancement’ of experience is gradually proliferating society, with many examples of augmented reality infiltrating various industries. Examples include art (see Mob Lab’s work on Sculpture By the Sea) and real estate (System K in Japan). What we are witnessing now is a “distributed cyberspace” where the virtual and real worlds collide resulting in new perceptions (Bolter and Grusin, 1999:61).


Reference

Bolter, J. D & Grusin, R. A. (1999) Remediation: Understanding New Media Cambridge, Mass and London: MIT Press

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