This exposition gives new perspectives on communities and public space in consideration of mixed-reality (XR) technologies. Centred around the 2022 StoryTrails project in the UK, it explores three key terms with particular reference to Public Space:

    1 - A People's Metaverse questions the possibility of a user-driven metaverse. 

    2 - Multiperspectivity is a term which deserves re-examination in the context of XR and mobile technologies.

    3 - Community Of Becoming, a term used by participatory public space artist Krzysztof Wodiczko, suggests qualities that should be fostered or safeguarded within an emerging “people’s Metaverse”.

As the Senior Immersive Mobile AR Producer for StoryTrails, I collaborated with partners in 15 UK locations to uncover untold stories and reveal them on-location through creative use of XR technologies. This award-winning project had a live reach of over 100,000 people and a media reach of over 1,000,000. Now, working with StoryTrails project leaders at Royal Holloway University of London & research colleagues at Bath Spa University, I am on an Arts & Humanities Research Council funded mission to explore its possible future incarnations. In triangulating the above concepts, I will lay out the theoretical underpinnings of my research. These will inform future experimentation and support wider dialogue around public space within mixed-reality futures.

Part 1 of 3: StoryTrails and the People’s Metaverse

My background and interest in AR/StoryTrails

I came to work with mixed reality technologies through my practice creating site-responsive arts  experiences. I worked briefly with theatre company Punchdrunk and staged my own theatrical promenade work in the streets of London, before dedicating myself for a number of years to Secret Cinema. Taking on a variety of in-between-use buildings, we (myself, founder Fabien Riggall, producer Harry Ross, a team  of artists, performers, producers and an actively involved audience) would explore a piece of classic cinema through an expanded immersive story world tied to contemporary social discourse. This work was  followed by special projects for the National Trust and The National Archives, bringing history to life where it happened, as well as curation of the site-responsive arts festival InTRANSIT which annually explored cultural  geographies through new arts commissions. 

In each case we were creating a mixed reality of sorts: the physical environment plus our additions to it, the historic or fictional story plus its current parallels. Though the term Mixed Reality (or XR) is generally used to refer to technologies bridging digital worlds with the physical world, the principles and processes display similarities. In all cases we are facilitating a situation in which two or more "realities" intersect for the benefit of the intended experience. This deliberate intersection, and the resulting resonances/dissonances, can be used creatively to great impact, allowing audiences to walk in the footsteps of their forebears, channel a continuity of people and/or place, or simply see their every-day spatial and socio-cultural environments in a new light. 

Cultural practitioners looking to challenge society are often quick to embrace the disruptive potential of new technologies. Krzysztof Wodiczko (whom I’ll return to later in this text) for example, writes of how “newly designed equipment could inspire a birth of a new community, even a temporary and momentary rebirth of democratic public space” (Critical Vehicles, 1999). John Grace, writing for the Guardian about StoryTrails in 2022, noted that “a new medium arrives in the world with no history and, to an extent, no cultural baggage”, giving an opportunity for people, in this case historian and presenter David Olusoga, to sidestep the entrenched flaws of established media. A similar drive to embrace the disruptive potential of the new seems to have inspired Olusoga's StoryTrails collaborator James Bennett (Director at StoryFutures, Royal Holloway, University of London). In particular, Bennett wrote about the (somewhat unfulfilled) promise of Multi-Platform Production (Linear Legacies, 2014), and a general move towards increased interactivity and away from linear formats.

How StoryTrails came about and its reasons for being

StoryTrails was commissioned in 2022 as part of Unboxed; a series of 10 art, science and technology projects supported and funded by all four national UK governments. It was commissioned following a period of research and development that took place between 2020 and 2021. This research and development was initiated by StoryFutures, the National Centre for Immersive Storytelling, at Royal Holloway University of London in partnership with the British Film Institute, Uplands TV, ISO Design, Nexus Studios and The Reading Agency's network of Libraries. Its publicly stated aim was to “harness the magic of immersive storytelling to bring to life untold stories from the past, through the magic of the 3D internet using augmented and virtual reality to reanimate public spaces in towns and cities across the UK”. It also drew on contemporary debates about the future role of our public libraries.

If StoryTrails was a Metaverse

In the latter phases of the 2022 StoryTrails project, Bennett began to refer to the body of work as a proto “people’s Metaverse”. In a public comment about StoryTrails he stated:

“It’s a small step to building a "people's Metaverse" where digital public space enables us to come together as citizens and communities to share stories that matter and start a conversation about who we are, and where we're going."

Given that this comment was made during a time in which the company Meta (Facebook) was synonymous with the term “Metaverse” it seems logical to read his comment by comparison. In 2022, Metaverse wasn’t just a new term through which to imagine mixed-reality public space – it was the brand-marking of an all-encompassing 3D internet future owned and enabled by the company. Given this, it is tempting to read within his comment some flavour of public ownership as opposed to corporate ownership. For artist-led discussion on the legal basis for public ownership of digital social media I refer the reader to Dutch artist Jonas Staal and lawyer Jan Fermon’s Collectivize Facebook project (2020). They argue for the legal recognition of Facebook as a public domain through the nature of its active use (the people make it public).

Taking Staal and Fermon’s position that the legal must ultimately keep pace with the actual, it would be best to focus here on the ways in which a mixed reality project like StoryTrails can actively produce public space. What new opportunities do mixed-reality technologies offer in terms of actively “coming together as citizens”, “sharing stories that matter” and provoking conversations about “who we are, and where we're going”?

Part 2 of 3: Multiperspectivity and public space in a Mixed Reality world

Having briefly discussed Mixed Reality from a technological and creative point of view, I will now discuss it in terms of multiperspectivity.

Historic readings of the term Multiperspectivity

Multiperspectivity has been approached different ways in different fields. Here, I will focus on how it has been written about in the field of history, as it most relates to the concerns of mixed reality heritage work in our shared physical environments.

I found philosophical traction within Robert Stradling’s Multiperspectivity in History Teaching (2003). For K. Peter Frizsche, multiperspectivity is “a strategy of understanding”. Ann Low-Beer goes further to say, “[it] means to be able and willing to regard a situation from different perspectives”. For both, mutiperspectivity applies to the historian, to the student or professional. As an immersive/participatory practitioner, and with specific consideration of the advances in XR mobile technologies I will now argue for Multiperspectivity as a tool not for myself (the professional), but for the audience. This requires interrogating the ways in which these technologies intersect with people and the physical environments they share. 

David Olusoga and the geography of public space

Speaking about StoryTrails in 2022, Olusoga stated: “Who knows where the metaverse is going, but it does feel that our physical worlds and this virtual world are going to intersect and that geography is going to be one of the triggers in those transitions.” StoryTrails demonstrated the possibilities of this most relevantly (to this exposition) through the following two strands of work.

The Maps strand focused on using accessible mobile 3D scanning apps to capture local places, people and objects and reassemble them through storytelling (oral histories) in digital space as “emotional maps”.

The Trails strand created an app which used Augmented Reality (AR, a specific type of mixed reality tech which places virtual content in physical spaces) to tell histories where they happened, in public space. The audience could download the app to their phone and use it to view virtual content seemingly placed (through a combination of GPS and visual positioning) in physical public space locations. The phone functioned like a magic lens, revealing invisible layers of spatial and socio-cultural realities from another time.

Both strands created a scenario in which the built environment (or a representation of it) became layered with multiple histories, multiple perspectives. Using mixed-reality tools free from the constraints of physics and permissions, there is theoretically no limit to what our familiar geographies could “contain”. This content could also be interacted with, added to, and could grow or morph over time.

How is mixed-reality public space different to digital public space?

The geographical element, the tie to the physical world, gives a site-specific framing for multiperspectival content – making it crucially different to the digital public space of Facebook, for example. That spatial dimension, that physical constant gives shared ground to varied perspectives – something additional in common through which strangers’ stories can connect.

Mixed-reality is also distinct from Virtual Reality and other digital 3D worlds (eg Massive Multiplayer Online games, MMOs) which are not tied to peoples’ relationships with physical spaces.

The dogma of the shared built environment and the disruptive potential of mixed reality

Our shared built environments are not a blank canvas and they often act to reinforce unequal dynamics in the production of public space. Corporate ownership, increasing limitations on public gathering and demonstration, surveillance, hostile architecture (e.g. spikes on benches), male-dominated statuary and baked-in colonial legacies are just some of the criticisms levelled at our shared built environments.  

Mixed-reality tech can be used to combat some of these issues by disrupting the physical appearance of existing architecture, giving digital permanence to ephemeral acts and crucially giving visibility to multiple perspectives – not just the dominant ones. This can be seen in a variety of ways throughout the StoryTrails project. It can be seen in the visual language of the “emotional maps”, where people-focused 3D scans captured using hand-held mobile devices are upscaled and creatively assembled to dominate the skyline of the resulting digital representation of their city. Instead of skylines dominated by institutions, corporations and grand architecture, the StoryTrails “emotional maps” are dominated by animated scans of real people, hand-held objects, front doors and service counters – all linked through peoples’ stories. It can be seen as a direct interruption of the built environment within the augmented reality trails, which add virtual objects to physical spaces. Often the trails use this technological capability to bring transient moments of people-led history to life where (or near as possible to where) they happened, bringing the power of those moments to bear on the audience’s interpretation of the present-day built environment. This can be seen for example in the Swansea trail What’s the scoop? by Jay Bedwani, in which a group of dock-workers link arms to create a human shield against an angry mob about to destroy a local Italian woman’s café in the panicked wake of Italy joining the war on Hitler’s side. Another example is the contrasted homecomings of Olympic medal-winners Dick McTaggart and Cissie Stewart set outside the train station in Dundee in a trail by Duncan Cowles (Against All Odds) – two similar moments able to be read together, prompting the audience to reflect on the unequal ways in which individuals are treated. The trails also contained opportunities for audiences to contribute and share their reflections on these moments through a “hope notes” system which gathered short text responses from the individual audience member and displayed the response together with the responses of others as a floating cluster of 3D text at the end of each trail.

It is in the disruptive, participatory use of mixed reality tech that multiperspectivity becomes a tool not only for the professional but for the audience too.

They use it in two ways:

- engaging with the perspectives of others

- positioning their own perspective in relation to them

So, we design a mixed-reality creation pipeline which allows for the public contribution of multiple geo-related perspectives through accessible tech, and then we will have produced mixed-reality public space, right?

Part 3 of 3: Actions towards Becoming

There is one further concept I believe is important in shaping my approach to the creation of mixed-reality public space.

Communities of Becoming as an alternative to equal co-creation

Notions of a “good” public space are often tied up with ideas of equality and democracy, for example Stavrides’ notions of “commoning” (Common Space, 2016).

When it comes to ways of getting the "audience" to participate, there are many considerations and approaches. How much do you want them to know, how much are they willing to learn and how much should they be aware of in order for ethical concerns to be satisfied? The 7 Principles of Complete Co-Creation (Jansen & Pieters, 2017), for example, provides a practical guide to fair and equal co-creation. The problem in our case is that I don’t believe that public space is co-created. I’m not alone in this belief.

For Wodiczko, public space is transformative and transform-ing – never fixed – “a communicative cross-stratum based on shared multiplicity of identities in an unstable process of becoming a community or, better, a community of becoming, the only commonality of which will be its communicated uncanny strangeness” (Critical Vehicles, 1999).

Encountering Wodiczko’s “communities of becoming” for the first time was a revelation. I had struggled to define my own participatory arts practice within the confines of co-creation, often worrying that I was falling short of its ideals, and wondering why the outcomes were so stagnant when I did adhere to those ideals. I came to understand the importance of strangeness – withholding information in order to retain possibility – arriving at tactics drawing on game theory to facilitate participation without too much explanation. Once the production of public space is too clearly defined it is no-longer public space. Furthermore, the more defined something is, the easier it is for audiences to come to the conclusion that it is “not for them”, resulting in a narrower range of perspectives.

There is a further inequality that Wodiczko argues for – that not all perspectives are of equal import when actively trying to disrupt social norms through new technologies. He argues that a “rebirth” of public space “will be constituted on the site of the newcomer, who is the stake of the society to come and the new mentality to be born”. This focus on outsider stories is also in-line with the StoryTrails project in which “hidden histories” and unheard voices were prioritised. He goes further to say that “if the stranger is a prophet who interrupts history, today’s artists and designers should help the prophet by designing special equipment for such an intervention”. A clear call to action which motivates my focus on accessible mixed-reality creation pipelines.