Simulacra and Simulation

Coined by internet activist Eli Pariser, the term filter bubble refers to a state of intellectual and cultural isolation resulting from personalised searches and targeted advertising based on past click behavior. It can be argued that the early utopian promise of the internet as a platform for global sharing and exchange has long been broken. The project aims to re-establish this promise through introducing a new typology of civic space that combines the streetscape, the internet and emerging media technologies.

Using emerging mixed reality platforms and devices and neural network style transfer, the project is an online app that has the ability to transform the streetscape through a range of visual filters in real time - reshaping the streetscape into a space for cultural exchange between citizens. Users are able to compose and share customized versions of the urban fabric, repainting the city in any array of desired visions or lenses - from old folklore to ancient epics or even pop-cultural iconography. They are transported out of their “realities” into a hallucinogenic dreamlike landscape - disconnected from their prejudices and preconceptions and immersed in the unusual worlds of others.