Chicago 0,0 is the name we’ve given to an Augmented Reality mobile app that will creatively share images from the Chicago History Museum’s massive photo archive, many never before seen. Selections from the archive will be published to audiences outside the Museum through an Augmented Reality mobile experience: images superimposed onto corresponding sites through image recognition.
Chicago 0,0 refers to the corner of State and Madison where the city’s street numbering begins; this was the site of our first AR experience prototypes: users discovered in downtown locations images from the last century juxtaposed with their current city standing in the exact location, seeing the same view as photographers long ago. In 2015, our first prototype was demoed as a live AR tour for curators at the Museums and the Web conference and featured on the cover of Code Words: Technology and Theory in the Museums. With production grant funding from the Princess Grace Foundation, Chicago 0,0 will be publishing its first episode this summer: a narrated immersive AR tour of the Chicago Riverwalk. Our AR tour event last Fall of the Riverwalk for the Design Matters conference is documented below.
The Chicago Riverwalk will be the first of four episodes, each focusing on different stories, locations, events, and time periods around Chicago. Each episode explores this new medium and channel for sharing Chicago's rich media archives with the public: history embedded in the objects and places of our city.
Chicago 0,0 is a collaboration between the Chicago History Museum and Geoffrey Alan Rhodes, Associate Professor of Visual Communication Design at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. The first episodes of the project are funded by The Princess Grace Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Coming to iOS & Android Fall 2016.
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On-site with the Chicago 0,0 Riverwalk
Views from Chicago 0,0 Riverwalk
In-app views, April 2015.
Chicago 0,0 Augmented Reality tour at the Museums and the Web conference, Chicago, April 11, 2015.
An onsite tour for attendees of the Museum and the Web conference, Chicago, April 11, 2015.
Museum and the Web attendees were invited to meet with the developers of CHICAGO 0,0, to experience an AR walking tour of downtown using the Chicago 0,0 app prototype. Assistant Professor Alan Rhodes from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago's Department of Visual Communication Design and Chicago History Museum's Director of Curatorial Affairs, John Russick, led the group a few blocks away to the corner of State and Madison streets; the virtual tour was both an excursion through the physical city via the app and an exploration and discussion with colleagues on the challenges and opportunities presented by such technologies.
