augmented[archive] – Cairo Edition – the augmented archive

augmented[archive] is a digital art project, an iOS and Android app; a growing, expanding archive, a topography of the possible, a map of fragments from a city’s manifold presents.  The project takes the form of a spatial narrative, functioning like a speculative archaeological tool, leading you through real and virtual ruins of past, present and future of the city and its imaginary expansions. Its framework is a media architecture, a GPS-based archive that can be read and rewritten, open for your thoughts and interaction. A guide that speaks of the various contestations of the city and your personal encounters with and within them.

You will have to use a device to enter this virtual palimpsest, a smartphone, or a tablet and your imagination. Think of Walter Benjamin’s Arcade Project in the digital age of transmission and real-time; a fragmentary poem guiding you through actual and potential disasters and desires; spaces and times of here and now. While walking with this device you will experience video documents—recorded at the same place at other times; performances—absent yet present;  associative story-telling—dreamlike yet hyper-real; suggestive instructions—asking for your own contribution and continuation of a story that is as conflicted, disjointed and elusive, as yourself and the city around you.