ARtivism: AR-Enabled Accessible Public Art and Advocacy

TL;DR

This paper proposes ARtivism, an augmented reality approach to make public art more accessible for blind and low vision individuals, enhancing their participation in activism and social engagement.

Contribution

It introduces a novel AR-based process artifact for accessible public art and discusses the challenges at the intersection of activism, art, and technology.

Findings

Designed ARtivism as a process artifact for accessibility

Highlights tensions between public art, activism, and technology

Builds on prior crowdsourced mural description project

Abstract

Activism can take a multitude of forms, including protests, social media campaigns, and even public art. The uniqueness of public art lies in that both the act of creation and the artifacts created can serve as activism. Furthermore, public art is often site-specific and can be created with (e.g., commissioned murals) or without permission (e.g., graffiti art) of the site's owner. However, the majority of public art is inaccessible to blind and low vision people, excluding them from political and social action. In this position paper, we build on a prior crowdsourced mural description project and describe the design of one potential process artifact, ARtivism, for making public art more accessible via augmented reality. We then discuss tensions that may occur at the intersection of public art, activism, and technology.