Enhanced Realities for Natural Spaces

June 21, 2005

Categories: The Ubiquity Papers Think

One question, of many, from the Urban Learning Space Play, Mobility and Learning forum at Oran Mor:

Does providing digital experiences around natural spaces – parks and wilderness places – devalue or supplant the experience of visiting them?

Any space has multiple layers of perception – whether it's the geology of Yellowstone behind the spectacular geysers, the history of London embodied in Regent's Park or the song of the warblers in the Norfolk Broads, every visitor, physical or virtual, experiences a level of detail according to their experience and existing knowledge. What digital enhancement of physical spaces can do is help engage people with further levels of detail beyond their assumptions, it can add persistence to individual and collective stories generated around a place, it can extend effective access to a place and, above all, it can help engage visitors far beyond their initial intent. That engagement is self-selecting – not everyone who experiences a physical place will engage with it and many who can't experience it at any given time wish to engage with it. Creating a digital overlay - an "Enhanced Reality" for a virtual place can both help engage the uncomprehending and extend the physical boundaries of the place. In doing so, understanding of structure, causality and process can only be improved.

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