Situating Landmarks in a more expansive history

Need: The Statue of Liberty is renowned for the ideals of freedom, democracy, and enlightenment it evokes. However, who did these ideals serve? While many US Americans associate this historic landmark with the liberty found in its name, the 1886 dedication of the Statue of Liberty to the US from France did not symbolize freedom from the violent racism and discrimination African Americans faced in this country. In fact, "the Statue emphasized the bitter ironies of America's professed identity as a just and free society for all people regardless of race".

The landmarks around us become symbols through the stories we tell about them. They are reified through narrative. Leveraging that same power of narrative equips us with the tools us to disrupt the symbolic meanings we've been led to believe. We need to reframe the narratives underpinning symbolic landmarks, like the Statue of Liberty, to collectively honor the lived histories of Black Americans.

Concept: To get people questioning the narratives around and reinforced by historical landmarks, we need to get these narratives interact with each other. By putting the contradictory symbolic associations side by side, we create a dialogue between two different versions of the United States. The affordances offered by augmented reality allow us to overlay ideas on to what we see with our eyes; it allows us to give shape and form to the often unspoken truths underlying the reified objects that create our world. This AR experience superimposes conflicting ideas about the Statue of Liberty on the landmark itself, subsequently directing users to an article to learn more about the contentious symbolism of the Statue.

Learning Theories

Situativity

"Knowledge is situated, being in part, a product of the activity, context, and culture, in which it was developed." (Brown, 1999)

This learning experience draws heavily from situativity, a theory that underscores the undeniable role of context in producing knowledge. AR lends itself strongly to this theory by expanding our possibilities to interact with the world around us and generate new knowledge through those interactions. This learning experience asks users to question the world around them and bring the narratives that sustain this world to light to begin to reinvent it. By using an AR platform that enables the user to bring the experience into their bedroom, their classroom, their office, or any other location, the prototype asks users to integrate these critical questions into their daily realities .