MemeMe
An augmented-reality art game makes space for personal voices among the city’s signs. Participants turn sentences into three-dimensional forms, place them in public space and discover the messages left by others.
The city is filled with signs, advertisements and public objects, while opportunities for inhabitants to inscribe their own voices are limited. Developed with support from Art Center Nabi’s Playmaker programme, the work approaches this question through a game of making and encountering signs.
A message can acquire a place in the city without becoming a permanent physical object. Augmented reality connects individual expression with the experience of finding another person’s trace.
From sentence to sign
An algorithm converts an entered sentence into Korean symbols and reconstructs them as a three-dimensional sign. Language becomes a form that can be seen from different positions and situated among other objects.
The transformation gives each contribution a visual presence. Its meaning remains open to interpretation when another person encounters the sign, connecting expression with the act of reading.
Placing a voice
Participants can upload a sign to the cloud or attach it to a location in the city. A mobile screen reveals these forms within the physical surroundings, making placement part of the message.
Walls, streets and public spaces give each sign a context. The game invites participants to consider where a voice might be encountered and what a place adds to its interpretation.
Make, place, discover
A map connects signs distributed across the city. Discovering a contribution left by someone else turns movement through public space into an opportunity to read and interpret.
Making, sharing and finding form a cycle of exchange. Individual messages become part of an environment that other people can explore through their own routes and encounters.
Walking with other voices
The MemeMe Tour workshop brought participants into the streets to make and place signs together. They shared messages and discussed how individual voices might appear within public space.
The tour makes the exchange between speaking and encountering visible as a group activity. Walking together provides time to notice different interpretations and consider how a personal message relates to the city around it.
A sentence becomes a sign, and a sign becomes an encounter. The city holds these personal voices in a form that others can find and interpret.
Credits
- Support
- Art Center Nabi / Playmaker