Remaking History
Remaking History
an AR sound installation set in my family's ancestral house in Kerala, in May 1934. the house is gone, and so are most records of the people in it. visitors scan a floorplan with a tablet and overhear the household.
the installation
all i had of my recent ancestors was a few photos and stories. no written records, and the house itself was gone.
i interviewed family, researched 1930s Kerala, wrote three scripts mixing real people and places with plausible fiction, and built an AR app in Unity that plays them when you scan the floorplan.
twelve markers trigger two conversations and a radio broadcast from May 1934, and cards about objects from the house.
objects from the house
scanning a marker on an object shows a card about it. the charkha belonged to my great-grandfather, a follower of Gandhi.
the app in use
scanning the floorplan and listening in.
filling gaps in family history with fiction comes with a responsibility to the real people in it.
these were real people in my family. i tested the scripts with family for accuracy and tone before building any AR, and kept the invented parts to what was plausible for Kerala in 1934.
sound worked better than pictures would have. visitors pictured the rooms themselves, the way i only know the house through family descriptions. and in an exhibition the AR had to be reliable first: two rounds of testing went into markers that scan easily and an order that's easy to follow.