AR
Title: Urumqi Road Everywhere
Yoki Xue, Phillip Wang
For the final project, Yoki and Phillip will collaborate to do an AR experience in response to the recent protests flaring across China. The civil unrest was sparked by anger over Urumqi's deadly fire and the government's increasingly extreme zero-Covid policy. While in democratic countries, the right to protest has often been guaranteed and practiced, it is incredibly rare and risky for the Chinese, who have long been submissive to the overarching dictatorship, to call for the lift of lockdown, speech freedom, and eventually the resignation of Chinese President Xi. As Chinese overseas, we know how much courage it takes for them to speak out and we were thus strongly motivated to resonate with this voice.
Shanghai is one of the main hubs for this nationwide demonstration and it happens to have a road named after Urumqi city. People assembled on this road to hold candlelight vigil and protests, which unsurprisingly hit the bottom line of the authorities who literally took down the sign of "Urumqi Road" as shown in the photo. They ridiculously thought that this would dissuade people from gathering here. Although the sign was physically gone, we know that it could be replicated on every street. We realize that Augmented Reality technology could very well serve this goal by integrating digital visuals with the user's environment in real-time. We also plan to add interactivity that when the user approaches the sign, the audio from real footage will be played to echo people's chants.
Production Plan
Since this is an interactive AR scene with customized objects, such as the said signage, we have to fabricate customized objects in Blender and export them to XCode. Additionally, we need to include audio components that are clipped from the protests. Therefore, the production plan is as follows:
Blender
Learn object sculpting and rendering
Fabricate 3 iconic signages in the protests
Color them for realistic effects and shape
XCode
Import and integrate the models from Blender
Compile scripts for interaction and positioning (signages only placed on ground)
Load audio clips and link with signages
Miscellaneous
Search and download audio clips
Text descriptions of background story and more information about the events
Subtitles
Potentially more interactable elements in the scene