Marc Ella Roy
Honors Project (2022)
plannAR is a series of three augmented reality interventions that explore and critique the field of urban planning and its impacts on our 21st century cities. Over my years in the Media and Urban Studies majors at Hunter, I’ve asked: who are planners? Why does their work matter? What harms have they perpetuated? How do they uphold or break the status quo? Rather than offering strict answers to these questions, these three augmented reality pieces create space for deeper criticism by transforming the smartphone into the planner’s lens. This allows us to expose some of the hidden structures undergirding our streetscape, sparking reflection and meditation on the nature of cities and the field of urban planning itself. Although the main medium of this project is visual and auditory augmented reality, plannAR is a true multimedia project. From conducting interviews and crafting audio soundscapes, to building custom 3D models, illustrations, and webpages, crafting this project has been the greatest challenge of my undergraduate career. The project includes three augmented reality pieces or “parts,” accessible via the project website.
