Ghosts of Solid Air: Using Augmented Reality to Engage with Debates about Contested Monuments

Abstract

Ghosts of Solid Air is an innovative augmented reality (AR) experience designed for smartphones and based in and around Trafalgar Square in London which launched in October 2023 as part of the BFI London Film Festival for Black History Month. Co-developed with a group of young people who identify as Londoners of colour, it responds to and engages with debates regarding colonial monuments and dominant historical narratives and how these might be contested and protested in the public sphere. In this talk, Rodney Harrison, one of two academic co-leads on the project (with Colin Sterling, UVA), which has been co-developed with the award-winning immersive design specialists We Are Anagram, reflects on the process of developing the app, and the potential for such immersive augmented reality experiences to transform engagements with contestsed heritages globally.

UCL Institute of Archaeology Research Seminars Programme | Term I, 2023-24

The Term I seminar series will again highlight current Institute of Archaeology research. These are scheduled to be in-person events; where speakers have agreed, a recording may be made available afterwards.

Mondays, 5pm 

• 9 October: Victoria Lucas (Archaeological Sciences): "Everything Old is New Again" early medieval glass recycling: technology, change, and resourcefulness
• 16 October: Jan Kolar (Archaeological Sciences): Prehistoric demography, social transformations and woodland in Central Europe
• 23 October: Giacomo Fontana (World Archaeology): Computational and landscape approaches to non-urban political centralisation in the 1st millennium BCE Mediterranean: the Samnites 
• 30 October: Ulrike Sommer (World Archaeology): Varna, Bodrogkeresztúr and the development of formal cemeteries in the Carpathian Basin

[6 November: Reading Week - no seminar]

• 13 November: Johanna Zetterstrom Sharp (Heritage Studies): Mid-century Museum ‘Best’ Practice and Self-Defined Anti-Racism
• 20 November: Cristina Castillo & Dorian Fuller (Archaeological Sciences): Evolutionary Dynamics of Enset Vegeculture in Ethiopia
• 27 November: Rafie Cecilia & Theano Moussouri (Heritage Studies): Inclusive Digital Museum Innovation 
• 4 December:  Veronica Occari (Archaeological Sciences/World Archaeology): The Technology of Medieval Venetian Glass and the Levantine Connection 
• 11 December: Rodney Harrison (Heritage Studies): Ghosts of Solid Air: Using Augmented Reality to Engage with Debates Regarding Contested Monuments in London  - this seminar will take place in Archaeology LT (G6)