New Augmented Reality App Featuring Local Artists Launches For Ōtautahi Christchurch

Gap Filler’s Pae Tākaro Place of Play programme has collaborated with Dr Troy Innocent from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) Future Play Lab to create an Augmented Reality (AR) journey in Ōtautahi Christchurch called ‘64 Ways of Being.’

‘64 Ways of Being’ is an urban art experience that uses location-specific participatory artworks, game design and stories to bring the streets, parks and Ōtākaro Avon to life via mixed reality. Players will explore the streets of Ōtautahi and be guided through the city and along the banks of the Ōtākaro. Along the way, players are prompted to reimagine the world through urban play. 

This project draws together Indigenous and tauiwi (non-Māori) artists and the diverse stories of our city through playable public art, encouraging people to engage with the city in new ways. This collaboration also supports long-term strategic research and evaluation of the social and/or cultural benefits of the urban play experience.

Vanessa Karakia-Kore Gray (Waitaha, Kāti Māmoe, Kāi Tahu (Kāti Irakehu and Ngāi Tūāhuriri) is the project’s creative director and cultural consultant.  She has curated, written and voiced multiple sections of the journey. 

Kris Herbert is the project coordinator of 64 Ways of Being in Ōtautahi. She has bought her extensive skills in location-based audio production to the project and has pulled everything together in time for us to launch the journey as part of the Doc Edge Festival. Whoop! 

Join for the 64 Ways of Being artist panel on Saturday 22 June, 1pm @ Tūranga Central City Library. More details below. 

After the panel we will launch the 64 Ways of Being journey, join Kris Herbert and Kate Finnerty (Urban Play Coordinator, Gap Filler) and play the city. We will start at 2pm @ Tūranga Central City Library. Bring your mobile phone fully charged and a set of head/ear phones.

64 Ways - Artists, Writers and Musicians

Street artist and designer Kophie Su’a-Hulsbosch (Samoan, Dutch), theatre practitioner Popi Newbery (Ngāi Tūhoe) and poet Ben Brown (Ngāti Mahuta, Ngāti Koroki, Ngāti Paoa) have collaborated on a digital character, who guides participants through an immersive augmented reality experience along the Greenway/inner city.

Sound artist Jo Burzynska has designed a site-specific, multiplayer music experience that is controlled by the players and responds to an artwork installation on-site.

Lonnie Hutchinson (Ngāi Tahu, Ngāti Kurī ki Ngāi Tahu, Samoan and European), is collaborating on an augmented reality experience that brings her artwork on the Justice Precinct to life with moving graphics and sound.

Tongan artist Sēmisi Fetokai Potauaine will guide users to another augmented reality experience at his artwork, Vaka ‘A Hina in Rauora Park.

The experience also features tracks from local musicians including Ariana Tikao, Haast Hāwea, Judith Bell, Junus Orca, Mahinia-Ina Kingi-Kaui, Motte, NFY, Ladi6 and the late Bulletproof.

64 Ways of Being is supported by Smart Christchurch (Christchurch City Council), Ōtautahi Christchurch, the research project is funded by ARC Linkage Project LP220100066 Play about Place: Expanding the impact of Creative Placemaking after COVID through the Australian Research Council.

64 Ways - artist panel and discussion
1pm, Saturday 22 June @ Tūranga, Central City Library
followed by the 64 Ways of Being journey at 2pm

Join us at Tūranga as we speak with artists and researchers involved with 64 Ways of Being. Vanessa Gray, Lonnie Hutchinson and Ben Brown (Zoom) will join Aramiha Harwood from RMIT (Aus) and MC Steve Matthewman from the University of Auckland.

The discussion will focus on the development of 64 Ways of Being in Ōtautahi Christchurch, including the challenges of adapting work to augmented reality, the connected impact study with RMIT and the potential of projects like this to create opportunities for decolonisation or a treaty-based future.

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