Ghost Cities: Augmented Heritage

Based on examples of the authors' laboratory and from other researchers and artists' experiences, this chapter argues how the experience of urban cultural heritage through augmented reality transforms those models and images in digital spatialized ghosts. Within the theoretical framework of augmented space (Manovich, 2005) and hybrid space (Souza e Silva, 2006), the chapter focuses on augmented experiences of art and culture. The authors state that user engagement and its relation to urban augmented heritage changes our relationship with collective memory and the understanding of urban space itself, which is now understood as a medium. Heritage practices can be defined as the management of values of heritage objects with the intention of transmission across generations. The idea of augmented heritage relates to the engagement created with the use of augmented technologies. For instance, 3D digital models of buildings or old photos can be geolocated and visualized in the context of contemporary cities through the screens of mobile devices, creating unique experiences that connect different ages in a hybrid spacetime. We named "ghost architectures" buildings that persist in the memory of citizens even after they are gone - or even when they were never built in the first place but have strong influence as ideas. Augmented heritage is like those buildings, without physical space in the city but geolocated and with a place in the collective memory. Like the ghosts in A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens ( 1843), the ghost architectures visualized in augmented reality (AR) can evoke reflections on the Past demolished buildings - such as the Monroe Palace in Rio de Janeiro, which can be visualized through an augmented reality layer created by our lab; on the Present showing hidden infrastructures or questioning reality, such as the case of Augmented EBA, a never-built art school pavilion that had an artistic intervention with an inauguration cocktail and an augmented reality model for visualization; or on the Yet to Come - showing future constructions, never-built architectures or utopic buildings, such as the case of the Porto Maravilha project, in which the AR experience helped researchers to understand the impact of the new urban regulation for the area. Augmented reality can also bring together buildings that were apart in space and time but have common themes and style, such as the Brazilian World Expo buildings of 1939, 1958 and 1970 that now can be part of an AR exhibition in the city of Rio de Janeiro, revealing the evolution of Modernist Brazilian Architecture. The concept of a "ghost city" represents the layer of information and memory that has always been upon cities, tacitly known by most of its inhabitants, and that now, once digitized, can be accessed - or revealed - by mobile technologies by virtually anyone, and that now can be part of image of the city.