Urban Codes // Parallel Worlds

Abstract

noemaflux creates a network of relations between four players, an urban landscape, an invented language and an artificial world. Players experience the work in streets and laneways in which symbols from an invented language are integrated into the streetscape. These symbols, or symbol-codes, are also machine-readable codes. They are portals into an artificial world--viewed on a mobile device via augmented reality (AR)--that is interconnected with the city. By interacting with the work, players enter into a symbiotic relationship with this world and bring to life 'media creatures'--a poetic term to describe digital entities that visualise urban codes in AR. This paper will reflect on this experience in two ways: firstly, by defining further the dual nature of symbol-codes; and, secondly, by articulating new experiences of urban space and different ways of seeing the city enabled by staging encounters with urban codes.