LIVEFOREVER 

Year: 2014

Location: Los Angeles, CA

Team: Guvenc Ozel

#Liveforever is an augmented reality experience along the trail that leads to the Hollywood Sign. The hike allowed participants to uncover fictional relics from the future through an augmented reality app installed on their mobile devices. Four pedestals, each telling a story about an imaginary yet quintessential Los Angeles personality, served as trackers that called out particular 3D models when the participant pointed their mobile devices camera toward them. They were be able to observe, reveal and interact with these mythological objects that correspond to possible future stories of Hollywood and Los Angeles urban culture. The project, revolving around a fictional story line, allowed for a subversive mode of interaction with nature, where technology mediates between what is visible and what is hidden, what is real and what is virtual, during an activity like hiking that is inherently non-technological.  It simultaneously calls into question the contemporary obsession with longevity and how theoretically this could manifest in a non-biopolitical fashion in a speculative era of consciousness without a biological existence.The digital relics being uncovered give clues about four fictional Los Angeles personalities; The Actress, The Performer, The Surfer, and The Entrepreneur. Each digital object is a part of a larger story that relates all the characters together.